Attorney General Loretta Lynch said last week that the Justice Department will investigate whether Chicago police “engaged in a pattern or practice of violation of the Constitution or federal law.” We hope Justice will also investigate whether Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and city officials prevented the release of a videotape of the shooting for political reasons.

In October 2014 officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald multiple times. Though a police car’s dashcam recorded the confrontation, the videotape was kept from public view until a judge ordered its release in a lawsuit. City officials, who had likely seen the video, echoed the police line of self-defense that now seems suspect.

The episode has roiled Chicago. On Wednesday an emotional Mayor Emanuel tried to defuse the tension by issuing a public apology and acknowledging the problems with a police force that embraces a culture of silence. “I should have given voice to the public’s growing suspicions, distrust and anger,” Mr. Emanuel said. “My voice is supposed to be their voice.” Protesters demanded his resignation.

The chairman of the College of DuPage board of trustees, who has led reform efforts at the school, abruptly resigned Sunday in a letter to faculty and students, citing only “personal reasons” for her departure.

Katharine Hamilton called it an “honor” to serve nearly three years on the board, including the last eight months as chairman.

“It is with sadness, then, that for personal reasons I am resigning from this board effective immediately,” Hamilton wrote. “I have enjoyed working together with my fellow trustees to build upon the strengths of COD and address its future needs.”

Amtrak passenger numbers fell in Illinois during the latest federal fiscal year, though the total still neared 1.3 million.

The carrier attributed the 4 percent decline for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 to low gasoline prices, which have encouraged more driving, and to high-speed rail construction between Chicago and St. Louis that forced periodic use of chartered buses. Nationwide, weather also was cited in revenues and ridership that were basically flat.

“We had plenty of construction improvements,” spokesman Marc Magliari said last week, referring to the high-speed rail work.

Even a program that has put on the road thousands of new state police vehicles financed by a dedicated motorists’ fee has been caught up in the Illinois state budget debacle.

A vehicle-registration surcharge that has raised $58 million and transformed the Illinois State Police fleet from a junkyard of overtaxed hulks to a stable of safe and more efficient cruisers is stalled because of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s moratorium on vehicle purchases.

An Associated Press analysis of records obtained under the Illinois Freedom of Information shows the program has been successful in regularly removing from the highway pursuit vehicles that have surpassed their useful, cost-efficient and safe lifespans. A 2003 report maintained by the AP includes a squad car with 900,000 miles.

A federal judge ruled against a group of Chicago police officers who argued that unwritten department policies kept them from being paid millions of dollars in overtime for responding to work-related calls and emails on their smartphones while off duty.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sidney Schenkier issued a 38-page opinion late Thursday in a case where a central question was whether there was an unwritten rule requiring officers to stay engaged on their phones and respond to inquiries from superiors 24 hours a day.

Schenkier wrote that the city has established practices for filing overtime and didn’t do anything to prevent officers from using it. While the officers showed they performed off-duty work on their smartphones, they “fell far short of showing a uniform culture or well-grounded understanding” that they wouldn’t be compensated, the judge wrote. Schenkier noted that officers who submitted time-due slips for work done off-duty were paid and weren’t reprimanded.

A month ago I wrote a column telling you about a police dash-cam recording that could tear Chicago apart.

It was that recording of a white cop killing a black teenager, the cop pumping 16 bullets into the kid with the knife in his hand who was trying to walk away, the officer firing most of the shots with the young man already on the ground.

It was kept from public view for months and months, kept hidden until MayorRahm Emanuel won re-election with black voter support. But it couldn’t be suppressed forever.

Amtrak passenger numbers fell in Illinois during the latest federal fiscal year, though the total still neared 1.3 million.

The carrier attributed the 4 percent decline for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 to low gasoline prices, which have encouraged more driving, and to high-speed rail construction between Chicago and St. Louis that forced periodic use of chartered buses. Nationwide, weather also was cited in revenues and ridership that were basically flat.

“We had plenty of construction improvements,” spokesman Marc Magliari said last week, referring to the high-speed rail work.

Five years after the Tribune exposed a suburban official’s questionable $472,000 annual pay — and three years after he was indicted over it — the official continues to collect a lucrative pension as his case lingers in court.

Amid the high-profile debate over whether prosecutors took too long to charge a police officer in the fatal shooting of a Chicago teen, the case of Bellwood’s Roy McCampbell offers a window into just how long it can take to prosecute lower-profile cases, and how the delay can cost taxpayers in other ways.

McCampbell, Bellwood’s former comptroller, was accused of stealing more than $500,000 in allegedly inflated pay from the blue-collar, inner-ring west suburb before he retired in 2010. If convicted, he could lose his $257,000-a-year pension.

Another former Illinois legislator was sent to the slammer last week.

But the news about former Chicago Democratic state Rep. Connie Howard isn’t just that she’s the latest in a long line of state elected officials to pursue self-interest rather than the public interest. That’s old news.

Howard was among a handful of public officials and political hangers-on who were caught up in a multimillion-dollar scandal involving state grant money that was siphoned off for personal rather than public use.