Chicago police blocked off roads to accommodate the march down Michigan Avenue, and officers in some areas formed a barrier of sorts between protesters and stores and helped shoppers get through the doors.
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Small groups of protesters stationed themselves in front of the many high-end retailers along the wide boulevard. The police union is also paying the lawyer representing the cop.
Protest leader Michael Pfleger said, “I would like to see Michigan Avenue stores take a big hurt”.
“We shut shit down”, was a common refrain.
Protestors counted up from zero to 16, and chanted “sixteen shots” to voice anger as Dyke reloaded and fired his gun sixteen times at the teen. The loss of Black Friday sales along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile can hurt the city somewhere down the line.
“Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said he believes the protests have gone “exceptionally well” in large part because his officers have gone out of their way to let demonstrators express their outrage”.
“We are closed indefinitely” a guard bellowed repeatedly.
She says she shopped at the Disney Store before the march began and that the protesters don’t bother her. She says it is interesting because she has never seen anything like this in Iowa.
At the North Face store, also in the John Hancock, employees reported the same barricading. “I’m Hispanic and I feel like them”, said Dante Franco, who with his family was stuck on Michigan Avenue, their gray minivan surrounded by a sea of marchers.
McDonald swings into view on a four-lane street where police vehicles are stopped in the middle of the roadway. Some demonstrators pushed shoppers. There have been isolated clashes between police and protesters, with about 10 arrests and only a few minor reports of property damage.
On the whole, though, the protest was over by this point, and it ended not at all with a bang but with a gentle whimper.
Protesters gathered at 63rd and Cottage Grove beginning at around 3 p.m. Saturday for a protest and march. Numerous leadership denied such intention.
Shouting, 16 shots! Its a cover-up! they called for a broader federal investigation to explain why it took authorities 13 months to indict a white police officer shown onvideotape fatally shooting a black teenager.
Murder charges were filed against Slager on April 7, less than an hour after the city’s mayor and police chief received the video, officials said at that time.
Days after McDonald’s death, the city turned over dashboard footage to prosecutors.
Van Dyke, 37, is being held without bond pending a hearing Monday when a judge in the case will view the video. He kept shooting – and shooting – after McDonald fell to the ground.
But Trotter backs the FOP’s decision to stand behind Van Dyke. The indicted officer now resides in a hospital building in protective custody.
Sid Heal, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s commander and force expert, questioned both Van Dyke’s decision to fire and the prosecutor’s move to charge him with murder. He also acknowledged that the public has the right to protest, but the Chicago police will not tolerate criminal acts during demonstrations.
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The group held the rally in the Woodlawn neighborhood, he said, because “we think it’s important that people show up where these crimes are taking place”, although McDonald was killed in another district, near 41st Street and Pulaski Road.
