Protesters called on Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign for failing to press charges sooner against officer Jason Van Dyke. “Furthermore, any official who helped suppress the videotape of Laquan McDonald’s murder should be held accountable”.
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Emanuel on Saturday released an opinion piece he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.
The report, released late Friday night, said Van Dyke kept firing – 16 shots in all – because Laquan McDonald was attempting to get up.
Demonstrators staged a “die-in” in downtown Chicago in protest of the fatal shooting of a black teen by a white police officer. City officials had fought in court for months to keep the video from public release, before deciding not to fight a judge’s order in November. Officers said at the time that the 17-year-old lunged at them with a knife, but the video released last week shows that McDonald was walking away at the time he was shot.
“VD believed O was attacking w/knife”, said a report of Van Dyke’s account.
But he says he should have known that a delay in releasing the video would raise suspicions because of the “checkered history of misconduct” within the police department.
The city has released information – including the video – in dribs and drabs, prolonging the scandal around McDonald’s shooting.
In the Johnson case, family attorney Michael D. Oppenheimer told reporters in the wake of Emanuel’s announcement he “wasn’t that surprised, given the pressure we’ve put on them, the press has put on them, that the public has put on them”. Two screenshots obtained by NBC Chicago and released this week show police officers sitting at a computer inside an adjacent Burger King, where reports indicate that footage of the events leading up to the shooting were erased.
Chicago authorities also have not been able to explain why the dashcam footage released to the public, including from other squad cars on the scene, doesn’t include audio that could shed light on what happened.
In both McDonald’s case and the Lopez case, questions have been raised about the validity of the police reports.
Van Dyke told an investigator that he feared that McDonald would rush him with the knife or throw it at him. “If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action”, he said in an emailed statement.
Walsh said McDonald attempted to get up after falling, “while still armed with the knife”. “Officers claimed, too, that even after McDonald had been shot by Van Dyke, the teen tried to lift himself off the ground with the knife pointed toward the officers, and though he had been mortally wounded, still presented a threat”. He said he eventually kicked the knife away from McDonald and then told the dying teenager “Hang in there” as an ambulance was called.
After the round of bullets were fired, Van Dyke approached McDonald to knock the knife out of his hand. But, in another contradiction, one of the police reports said the recovered knife’s “blade was in the open position”.
One report said McDonald showed “irrational behavior”, such as ignoring verbal directions, “growling” and making noises. The details emerged in hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed reports that prompted supervisors to rule McDonald’s death a justifiable homicide hours after he was shot.
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The reports also note the 911 call after the shooting and radio transmissions from the scene “were consistent with the statements of the police officers”. The autopsy on McDonald found that he had the drug PCP in his system.
