Over the past couple of months, many residents of Chicago have been calling for the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Illinois Observer found Emanuel’s approval rating at only 18%. According to The Beacon’s poll, more than half of those asked thought the mayor should resign.

One of the main causes behind the call of resignation was the fatal shooting of 17 year old Laquan McDonald by a police officer. McDonald was fatally shot 16 times by police officer Jason Van Dyke on Oct. 20, 2014. This was all caught on video, using the dash cam in the officer’s car. Rahm Emanuel knew of the dash cam video showing the horrific shooting around December 2014. Not much happened with the case until April 2015, when the city paid the McDonald family a preemptive settlement of $5 million dollars, “hush money”. With an election coming up, mayor Emanuel did everything in his power to avoid this heading to the courtroom. Then, this last November, thirteen months after it happened and six months after Emanuel was re-elected, the heinous video was released.

There’s no doubt that the delayed release of the video played a part in the mayoral election. Emanuel faced a close race and runoff with Jesús “Chuy” García. Emanuel had 55.83% of the vote, leaving García with 44.17% of the vote. The results of this race could have been considerably different if the city knew about the mayor’s effort to cover up the dash-cam video. Despite his re-election, it’s clear that the city feels differently about Rahm now. If the mayor were to resign, it wouldn’t fix everything wrong with Chicago; but many argue that it’s a start.