In the video, McDonald appeared to be walking away from Van Dyke, who was charged last month with first-degree murder.
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This, as questions persist about a code of silence in the department in the wake of the shooting death of Laquan McDonald and subsequent inconsistent statements made by police officers on the scene.
Van Dyke’s attorney Daniel Herbert reportedly did not comment on the indictment.
In the mayor’s first press conference since his public apology last week over the Laquan McDonald case, Emanuel said he hopes the federal probe will lead to genuine solutions in the police department.
Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez filed one first degree murder charge against Van Dyke last month before the dashcam video of the shooting was released. There’s no rush: Investigations of far smaller departments have taken more than a year to finish, and it’s likely the one into Chicago’s 12,000-officer force will be the same. They met with top police commanders and interim superintendent John Escalante.
But for Emanuel, who has supported Urban Prep’s mission of making sure African-American teenage boys have success in college and named the school’s leader, Tim King, to the My Brother’s Keeper board, the incident is indicative of how widely anger over the McDonald shooting has spread throughout the city.
“We’re fully going to cooperate, everybody, and it is in our self-interests as a city that they’re here”.
Meanwhile, Emanuel responded to Chicago police union claims that officer morale is the lowest it’s been in decades.
Emanuel said Wednesday that the investigation is in its beginning stages. It’s a reference to the number of times white Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke shot African-American teen McDonald during an October 2014 encounter that prompted a Justice Department investigation of Police Department practices.
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Emanuel is scheduled to meet with Justice Department investigators Thursday. But he says it’s not surprising officers are impacted by recent events. Angelo described it as an informal, off-the-record talk, and said he conveyed that the union wanted to “help facilitate the moving parts of the investigation”.
