RAHM EMANUEL had perhaps the toughest week of his political career last week. This week will hardly be any better, judging from its start. On the morning of December 7th, Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an investigation into whether the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has engaged in “a pattern or practice of violations of the Constitution or federal law”. The DOJ will pay particular attention to the CPD’s use of deadly force, racial, ethnic and other disparities in its use of force and its accountability mechanisms, said Ms Lynch.



Also today the CPD’s head of detectives, Constantine Andrews, resigned. His resignation came on the heels of the sacking on December 6th by Mr Emanuel of Scott Ando, the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, a watchdog that has lost credibility thanks to its apparent tendency to proclaim the fatal shooting of suspects by police officers justified under nearly all circumstances. Mr Ando’s departure followed Mr Emanuel’s dismissal on December 1st of Garry McCarthy, the chief of police he appointed in 2011.



More heads may roll as Mr Emanuel tries to contain what has turned into the biggest crisis of his political career. The crisis was triggered by the much-delayed release of a police car’s video at the end of November that shows the fatal shooting in October, 2014, of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, by Jason Van Dyke, a white police officer who had been the subject of numerous citizens’ complaints in the past for the use of excessive force and racial slurs (none of the complaints had let to any punishment of Mr Van Dyke). The public is outraged by what many see as a shameless cover-up of a murder for reasons of political expediency. Mr Emanuel ran for re-election earlier this year and received 58% of the black vote; his critics claim that he would not have been re-elected had the Laquan video been public before the election. The perceived code of silence of Chicago cops is another source of anger of the public. It was further fueled over the weekend by the revelation that at least five police officers corroborated Mr Van Dyke’s account (disproved by the video) that Laquan McDonald was moving towards him and threatened him with a knife.



Until recently Mr Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s first chief-of-staff, was widely considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, who may be lured away from Chicago by a cabinet post if Hillary Clinton becomes president next year. Though he has been the subject of controversy before thanks to his famously prickly manner and his pronounced penchant for the rich and powerful, he has never before been in such hot political waters. Led by Jesse Jackson, a black activist, around 400 protestors marched yesterday in Chicago demanding Mr Emanuel’s resignation. #ResignRahm has become a popular hashtag on Twitter. In an unusually harsh editorial, the New York Times, usually a Rahm-friendly newspaper, said last week that Mr Emanuel had “demonstrated a willful ignorance when he talked about the murder charges against the police officer” who shot McDonald by seeking to depict the cop as a rogue officer. And that he showed “a complete lack of comprehension” when he fired Mr McCarthy, not because he failed in his leadership role, but because he had become "a distraction".



Mr Emanuel had initially opposed a DOJ investigation calling it “misguided” but he changed his tune after Ms Clinton called for such a federal probe last week. (When asked about Mr Emanuel, Ms Clinton said that she still had confidence in the mayor of the city she was born in because “he loves Chicago” and he “will do everything he can to get to the bottom of these issues”.) Mr Emanuel now maintains that Chicago welcomes the DOJ investigation and pledged the city’s “complete cooperation”.



The weeks and months ahead will be a tough test for Mr Emanuel. In an op-ed piece published in Chicago’s two biggest dailies Mr Emanuel wrote that “at the end of the day, I am the mayor and I own it. I take responsibility for what happened and I will fix it”. Trouble is also brewing on other fronts. Later this week the Chicago Teachers’ Union is likely to vote for a strike. Chicago is broke and Mr Emanuel doesn’t know whether he will receive help from the state government to keep Chicago’s public schools afloat because Illinois still does not have a budget for the current financial year.

Mr Emanuel has cancelled a fundraiser for his re-election to a third term, planned for this week. Though his fund-raising skills are legendary, even he would have found it tricky to persuade donors to part with their money for a politician whose credibility has taken a huge hit.