A retraction and an apology

I've deleted my post yesterday criticizing Mayor Rahm Emanuel for apologizing for the actions of the Chicago police.

I confused the facts of the case I linked to- the shooting of Ronald Johnson, who had a gun- with the incident the mayor apologized for in his speech to the City Council. His apology referred specifically to the case of Laquan MacDonald, another African-American teenager who was armed only with a knife and whose shooting is a great deal harder to justify.

My apologies to the mayor and certainly to the MacDonald family. My only excuses are that the timing of the mayor's apology coincided with the uproar over he State's Attorney's announcement that she would not file charges in the Johnson case, and that I to read the article carefully enough to distinguish between superficially similar incidents.

Which are, of course, no excuses at all.

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