Alvarez said following the investigation she concluded that Hernandez’s actions were “reasonable and permissible” since Johnson resisted officers and was running toward a police vehicle and a city park while they believed he was armed.
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Ronald Johnson’s mother, Dorothy Holmes, addressed the supporters guaranteeing the fight is not over and demanded the immediate resignation of Anita Alvarez and Rahm Emanuel.
“I asked him if he feared or had any concerned that the State’s Attorney’s office was going to indict him”.
Two hours after Lynch’s briefing, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez gave a detailed presentation to reporters explaining why she would not seek charges in another 2014 police shooting death of a black man.
Various city agencies spent well over a year investigating the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, all while saying the release of the video could compromise the investigation.
Just before release of the videotape, Alvarez hurriedly did what she could have done all along – she charged Van Dyke independent of the grand jury with first-degree murder. In a statement Sunday, Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins echoed the mayor’s comment about welcoming a federal investigation.
A police report said McDonald “raised the knife over his chest and over his shoulder, pointing the knife at Van Dyke”.
USA authorities will look at the department’s use of force, including deadly force, among other issues, Lynch said at a news briefing to announce the civil probe.
On Dec. 1, Emanuel formed the five-member panel, called the Task Force on Police Accountability, to review the city’s system of accountability, training and oversight for cops.
The Chicago investigation follows the November release of a year-old video showing a police officer shooting and killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
Indeed, McDonald appeared to be moving away from Van Dyke when the officer now charged with murder fatally shot the teenager.
GUPTA: So our civil pattern-or-practice investigations don’t assess individual cases for potential criminal violations. That was in Pittsburgh, the first city the federal government targeted for intervention in 1997.
All witnesses, say no gun.
Assistant State’s Attorney Lynn McCarthy told a news conference Monday that Johnson did not obey several orders from police officers to drop his weapon. We have another part of the Civil Rights Division working with our U.S. Attorney’s office that does that. The manager told Chicago NBC/5 that officers entered the fast food eatery the night of the shooting and when they left, 86 minutes of video appeared to be missing.
Johnson was struck by the bullets and fell face down.
The video, taken from the dash cam of a squad auto, doesn’t show the moment Johnson was shot by Hernandez.
“Johnson could have easily turned around and quickly fired at the officers pursuing him or even fired as he ran”, she said.
Michael Oppenheimer, the Johnson family attorney, stated his disbelief in the decision, calling it “a joke” and “the blind leading the blind”, according to ABC News. Some chanted for Alvarez and Emanuel to step down.
The video shows six officers entering Coleman’s cell. What I strongly reject is the suggestion that the videotape of the McDonald shooting was withheld from the public because of the election.
But before Chicagoans get too mesmerized by the mayor’s crisis-management plan they shouldn’t forget about some of the men and women still on the city payroll – officers who lied, filed false reports and covered for each other by getting their “story straight”. An officer then drags him out by his handcuffed wrists. Coleman died later from an allergic reaction to medicine and not the use of force by police. A police review board found the officers’ actions justified, but Escalante said Monday that the matter is under investigation and Emanuel said the case is not closed.
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The Chicago Police Department is not a uniquely racist institution, Futterman says, it’s an institution embedded in a racist society.
