On Monday, Van Dyke appeared in court wearing handcuffs, leg irons, and a greenish grey prison uniform when he appeared before Judge Donald Panarese.
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Van Dyke began his incarceration under protective custody at a hospital facility segregated from the general population of Cook County Jail, the county sheriff’s office said. A judge had set bail at $1.5 million after appearing before a judge on Monday.
The city was on tenterhooks after last week’s release of video of Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. Then, shortly before police released the video last week, Van Dyke was charged with murder and turned himself over to police. A judge ordered Dean be held until Tuesday’s bond hearing, when prosecutors will likely agree to let him be released to his mother.
McDonald died after being shot 16 times. The problem is not “a few bad apples”, which is CPD’s usual defense when confronted with a Servin or a Van Dyke.
But Emanuel’s narrative comes against a backdrop of decades’ worth of Chicago police torture and wrongful conviction cases, corruption, and slapdash, ineffectual oversight practices in shootings and other excessive force actions by officers.
Van Dyke’s release came just hours after the online mass shooting threat by Jabari Dean, 21, caused the University of Chicago to close its doors. Van Dyke was captured on dashcam video shooting the black teen 16 times.
The normally bustling campus was nearly desolate Monday morning as Chicago Police Department and campus security vehicles patrolled streets.
The prosecutor defended taking a year to investigate the case, saying police shootings are “highly complex matters that carry with them very unique legal issues”.
Jay Darshane, a manager of the restaurant, said he told a grand jury this week that police had altered images in the surveillance video, which captured the moments before McDonald was shot, USA Today reported.
This is the first time in 35 years a Chicago police officer has been charged with murder for an on-duty killing.
Police have said McDonald was carrying a knife, and an autopsy revealed that he had PCP, a hallucinogenic drug, in his system.
In the audio-free video from October 20, 2014, McDonald can be seen walking down the middle of a four-lane street. Protesters also planned to target the Board of Trade and other landmarks in the coming days, he said. And on Friday, protesters sought to disrupt shopping in the city on the traditionally busy day after the Thanksgiving holiday.
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An autopsy showed McDonald had wounds in the scalp, neck, chest, left elbow, both arms, and his back, and only two of the wounds-to the lower back and upper leg- could be “definitively linked” to the seconds when McDonald was standing.
