SITTING in a hot, overcrowded room on the fifth floor of City Hall while presiding over a hastily convened press conference on December 30th, Mayor Rahm Emanuel looked tanned and rested. Little in his demeanour, and his unusually calm way of responding to journalists’ questions, betrayed the fact that the mayor is fighting for his political life. In the last few weeks calls for his resignation, from protesters in the street, church leaders and others, have grown louder every day.

Mr Emanuel had not planned to be in Chicago on the day before New Year’s Eve. He was on holiday with his family in Cuba over Christmas and intended to return to his hometown this weekend. But the calls for his resignation had reached such a pitch over the weekend that he cut short his trip and returned to Chicago on December 29th so that “he can continue the ongoing work of restoring accountability and trust in the Chicago Police Department”, in the words of Kelley Quinn, the mayor’s spokeswoman.

The reason for the intensifying outrage over the weekend was yet another tragic fatal shooting by police officers of two black Chicagoans, a teenager and a 55-year-old grandmother, in the wee hours of December 26th. Police officers had responded to a 911 call about a domestic disturbance in the west of the city. When they arrived at the building of the caller, they faced a “combative” 19-year-old, Quintonio LeGrier, wielding a baseball bat. Quintonio LeGrier was shot dead as was Bettie Jones, a first-floor tenant and neigbour of LeGrier and his father, Antonio LeGrier, who lived on the second floor. (The older LeGrier had called the police.) Ms Jones presumably came to open the door of the building for the cops. According to his relatives, the teenager had suffered from mental-health problems in recent months and was taking medication.



In a rare apparent apology, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) admitted that Ms Jones was a victim who was "accidentally struck and tragically killed”. But the CPD has not released any particulars about the officers who fired the fatal shots or any other detail about how the tragedy happened. Antonio LeGrier has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city.



During the press conference Mr Emanuel did not refer to the LeGrier case directly. But he announced steps to try to reduce shootings by police officers such as the doubling of the number of tasers used by officers from 700 to 1,400 by June 1st 2016. The mayor vowed to make police encounters with citizens less confrontational and more conversational. “Force should be the last option, not the first choice," said Mr Emanuel. The mayor had announced over the weekend that he had ordered John Escalante, the interim boss of the CPD, to review the police’s crisis-intervention team training, which teaches officers how to respond to a person with mental-health problems and is aimed at resolving confrontations with the mentally ill without violence. Only about 15% of the CPD have completed the training so far.

Mr Emanuel was asked at the press conference why he is acting only now to de-escalate tensions between the community and police. He didn’t reply directly but pointed out that the problems at the CPD built up over decades, rather than in the last four years when he was mayor of the city. The mayor is right, but there is little doubt that he ignored the problem of police misconduct for far too long and seems to be acting only now that his political future seems to be at stake.

The mayor is unlikely to resign and he cannot be impeached or recalled. There is also no obvious replacement for Mr Emanuel, who has a talent for attracting businesses to Chicago, has taken (controversial) steps to improve the city’s notoriously bad schools and remains one of the best connected people in the Democratic Party establishment. For better or worse, Mr Emanuel is likely to be Chicago’s mayor for another three-and-a-half years. And he will need all the stamina and flexibility of the ballet dancer he once was to deal with his city’s crime, its crime combatants, its catastrophic finances and its unruly union.