Dashcam video released last month appears to show McDonald moving away from the officers when Van Dyke fired. He shoots 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, whom authorities say is armed with a knife, 16 times, killing him.
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This video includes images from Getty Images.
Police fought for months to keep the public from seeing the dashcam video but released it last month facing a court deadline and only hours after Van Dyke was charged with murder. The city’s early efforts to suppress its release coincided with Emanuel’s re-election campaign, when the mayor was seeking African-American votes in a tight race.
Faced with growing criticism and demands for his resignation, Emanuel wrote an op-ed column in Chicago’s newspapers over the weekend, calling for broad changes at the police department but also laying out a defense of his own role.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to continue to serve the City of Chicago at this important juncture and look forward to this new challenge”, Fairley said in a statement distributed by Emanuel’s office.
“Civil rights division lawyers are reviewing the many requests for an investigation, which is the department’s standard process, and the attorney general is briefed regularly on the review and expects to make a decision very soon”, a department official said.
“If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action”, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
Several politicians, both local and national, have called for the Justice Department to launch an investigation, including Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, and Sen.
A Justice Department Civil Rights investigation of the police force would be separate from the federal investigation now under way in connection with the Jason Van Dyke shooting.
“We welcome the engagement of the Department of Justice as we work to restore trust in our police department and improve our system of police accountability”, Collins said.
Additionally, on Friday, the Chicago Tribune published police reports that contradicted what was shown in the video. The hundreds of pages described McDonald as a danger to himself and to officers. That further angered activists and protesters, who were already accusing the city of a cover up. In March, the department released a scathing report of the Ferguson, Missouri, police force that found pervasive civil rights abuses, and in May, it reached a settlement with Cleveland police that called for sweeping improvements – including to that department’s use of force policies. It opened an investigation of Baltimore police in May in response to the death of a black man in police custody.
Under Obama, Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and her predecessor, Eric Holder, have used patterns-and-practices investigations to aggressively probe police departments for potential constitutional violations, investigating dozens of departments since 2009.
The Chicago police department, Boykin said, has “a culture that protects wrongdoers”.
After a week of street protests, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ultimately fired his top cop, Garry McCarthy, despite spending the previous week claiming that he had full confidence in his police superintendent. The teen was shot sixteen times by officer Jason Van Dyke.
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On Sunday afternoon protesters marched from State and Van Buren down to the Thompson Center.
