People took to the streets of Chicago city in the United States Wednesday night and clashed with police as they protested for the second night the killing of 17-year old black teenager Laquan McDonald last year on the hands of a white Chicago policeman. They said a 3-inch knife with its blade folded into the handle was recovered from the scene.
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City officials and community leaders have been bracing for the release of the video, fearing an outbreak of unrest and demonstrations similar to those that occurred in Baltimore, Ferguson, Missouri and other cities after young black men were slain by police or died in police custody.
The graphic video was only made public after a judge ordered it to be released.
Prosecutors charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder on Tuesday, hours before the video’s release. That includes from the vehicle Officer Jason Van Dyke rode in as he briefly followed the 17-year-old McDonald before shooting him 16 times in the middle of Pulaski Road on the Southwest Side on October 20, 2014.
“Chicago’s response to Laquan’s death appears calculated to minimise political damage to the mayor, by removing this case from the election cycle”, he said, referring to a gap between the shooting and the first-degree murder charge brought against Van Dyke on Tuesday.
A group of activists is calling for people to protest the fatal police shooting of a black teenager and shut down a major retail corridor in downtown Chicago on Black Friday.
At one point Tuesday night, they seemed to form a circle and chanted names of others they said were also victims of police violence in the city. Politicians and church leaders in the Austin neighbourhood urged potential demonstrators to protest peacefully.
Acree and Hatch said blacks in the city are upset because the officer, though stripped of his police powers, has been assigned to desk duty and not fired.
“And to be thankful for the overwhelming majority of men and women in uniform who protect our communities with honour”.
The footage has sparked angry protests in Chicago, with more demonstrations expected in the coming days despite appeals for calm. Garry McCarthy was asked why the video released to the media didn’t have audio.
The absence of any recorded discussions from officers in any of the five vehicles for which videos were released makes it impossible to discern what the officers might have discussed in their cars on the runup to the shooting of McDonald. His attorney said Van Dyke feared for his life when he fired at McDonald and that the case should be tried in an actual courtroom, not the court of public opinion.
“You can not kill our children and expect us to be quiet any longer”, protester Quovadis Green said.
London, who was wearing a T-shirt with the phrase “Unapologetically black” on it, walked outside the courthouse to loud cheers. Police say nine people have been arrested, and a charge of aggravated battery of a police officer was dropped against one person on Wednesday.
Prosecutors did not explain why their office recommended dropping the charge.
Among them was the typically swamped Apple store, where dozens of employees in red shirts stood in an otherwise empty two-story space and watched through store windows as protesters linked arms to stop anyone from entering.
Johnae Strong, 25, May Page, 26, and Troy Alim, 24, were all charged with misdemeanors for resisting a police officer and were released on recognizance bonds.
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Dean Vanriper, 38, of Murrieta, Calif., was charged with a felony count of possession of a controlled substance, misdemeanor count of unlawful use of a weapon for being in possession of a stun gun, and one misdemeanor count of possession of a deadly weapon for being in possession of a knife, police said.
