Police in NY said protesters rallying against the same shooting had entered the Macy’s department store at Herald Square and also tried blocking the Lincoln Tunnel at one point, according to local CBS affiliate WCBS.
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(AP Photo/Paul Beaty). Chicago police officers struggle with protestors on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015, in Chicago.
What continues to roil the black community is how police and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez waited 400 days to release the tape, well after last spring’s election in which Mayor Emanuel faced stiff competition and had to undergo the first-ever runoff election in the city’s history, an eyebrow-raising moment for an incumbent in a city renowned for its “machine”-like politics”.
A march protesting the videotaped slaying of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer is planned Friday in the city’s busiest shopping district on the busiest shopping day of the year.
Demonstrators are calling for an independent investigation into the case and are questioning why it took more than a year for authorities to release the video to the public, and to bring charges against the officer. Rev. Jesse Jackson said he met with U.S. Reps.
Several people were arrested during the protests.
“There’s a longstanding presumption by prosecutors certainly, and also by jurors, that when officers use force it’s justified”, Schwartz said. The out-of-focus footage showed the teenager cross directly in front of Van Dyke’s squad auto as he fled.
Dashcam video of the shooting has since been released, prompting peaceful protests across the city. Two 18-year-old Chicago men, Max McKune and Omari Ferrell, were charged with resisting police officers. The racially mixed crowd chanted “16 shots” and “Hands up, don’t shoot”.
When informed in April that Van Dyke was the officer involved in the 2014 shooting, Nance responded: “It just makes me so sad because it shouldn’t have happened”.
Demonstrators shrugged off a cold drizzling rain to turn the traditional start of the holiday shopping season on Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile into a high-profile platform from which to deliver their message: The killing of Laquan McDonald was another example of what they say is the systemic disregard police show for the lives and rights of black people. A graphic video of the killing, captured by a patrol auto camera, was released publicly on Tuesday night, 13 months after the shooting.
Van Dyke’s attorney, Daniel Herbert, said his client feared for his life in his encounter with McDonald, who was armed with a knife, and that the one video doesn’t tell the full story of events leading up to the shooting.
Prosecutors charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder on Tuesday, hours before the video’s release.
President Barack Obama has said he is “deeply disturbed” by a police video that shows a white officer shooting a black teenager 16 times in Chicago.
Chicago Tribune’s Steve Schmadeke contributed. Bernie Sanders, said in his own statement that all Americans “should be sickened” by the video.
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A six-page “tool kit” was distributed to teachers with exercises created to help them and their students deal with McDonald’s death and the murder charges filed against Officer Jason Van Dyke.
