Shoot-to-kill Order Toned Down

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31658, 19 April 1968, Page 13

Shoot-to-kill Order Toned Down

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright) CHICAGO, April 18. The Mayor of Chicago has reacted swiftly to nation-wide controversy by toning down his earlier order for police to shoot to kill incendiarists and to maim looters in any future rioting.

Mr Richard Daley, a veteran Democratic political leader, told the City Council yesterday that police should use “the minimum amount of force” to make an arrest. In his statement the 66-year-old Mayor said a policeman should use his revolver if that was the minimum force required. Protests mounted after the Mayor angrily told a press conference on Monday that the city’s police chief had failed to issue an order to shoot to kill incendiarists and to “shoot to maim or cripple” looters. He said he thought those were the instructions in force during rioting here after the assassination of the civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King, but they were not carried out. The Mayor’s insistence on his “shoot to kill” instructions brought widespread protest from civil rights, religious and political leaders across the country. He said today it was the policy of Chicago Police Department, supported by the city’s administration that only minimum force necessary be used.

“But this established policy was never intended to support permissive violence, destruction and a complete denial for that respect for law which is vital to our democratic way of life,” he said. He added: “I cannot believe any citizen would hold that policemen should permit

an arsonist to carry out his dangerous, murderous mission. . . “Men poised with Molotov cocktails, incendiaries or fire bombs are the same as the assassins who pulled the triggers on the guns that killed the Rev. Martin Luther King and the late President John Kennedy.”