Chicago Officials Release Video in Shooting of Black Teenager
CHICAGO
— Chicago officials released a chilling dashcam video of the fatal
shooting of a black 17-year-old on Tuesday, just hours after a white
police officer was charged with first-degree murder in the encounter.
The video was released during a late afternoon news conference, fulfilling a judge’s order that it be made public.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel
acknowledged that the video would make some residents angry, but said
it was a time for healing. “It is now the time to come together as one
city, show respect for one another,” Mr. Emanuel said.
Earlier
Tuesday, Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney, charged the
officer, Jason Van Dyke, in the death of the teenager, Laquan McDonald,
who was shot 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.
Officer
Van Dyke fired all 16 shots, while other officers did not fire at all, a
county prosecutor, William G. Delaney, said at a hearing on Tueday.
Officer Van Dyke started shooting less than 30 seconds after arriving at
the scene, the prosecutor said, and he fired for 14 or 15 seconds. For
13 of those seconds, Mr. Delaney said, Mr. McDonald was already on the
ground. Witnesses said Mr. McDonald, who was carrying a folding knife,
never spoke to Officer Van Dyke nor did he do anything threatening
toward him.
Wearing
a sweater and jeans, Officer Van Dyke, who was taken off the Police
Department’s payroll on Tuesday, stood quietly in a courtroom here as a
prosecutor described the shooting. The judge, Donald Panarese Jr.,
ordered Officer Van Dyke held without bail, indicating that he wanted to
see the video before revisiting the question of bond at a hearing
scheduled for Monday.
The
charges against Officer Van Dyke seemed likely to blunt reaction to the
release of the video. Still, Chicago police prepared for a tense night
as the family of Mr. McDonald and local officials called for calm. “No
one understands the anger more than us, but if you choose to speak out,
we urge you to be peaceful,” the family, which opposed the release of
the video, said in a statement.
Ms.
Alvarez spoke of public safety as she announced the murder charges, the
first such charges against a Chicago officer connected to an on-duty
incident in recent memory. “I made a decision to come forward first
because I felt like, with the release of this video, that it’s really
important for public safety that the citizens of Chicago know that this
officer is being held accountable for his actions,” Ms. Alvarez said.
Dan
Herbert, a lawyer for Officer Van Dyke, has said the officer, a 14-year
police veteran, believed the shooting was justified because he feared
for his safety. Mr. Herbert said his client intended to go to trial.
Chicago’s
police force has its own sometimes painful history, which by some
estimates includes more than $500 million in settlements and other costs
over the last decade tied to police misconduct as well as reparations
for black residents who said a group of officers abused and tortured
them in the 1970s and 1980s.
Document: No Bail for Chicago Officer Jason Van Dyke
In April, the city agreed to pay $5 million to the McDonald family, even before a suit had formally been filed in the case.
For
months, the city had refused to release the video. On Thursday, city
officials reversed course after Franklin Valderrama, a Cook County
judge, ordered it released. Announcing that the city would not appeal
the case after being expected to, Mr. Emanuel strongly condemned the
officer’s actions. Officer Van Dyke “took the law into his own hands,”
the mayor said after charges were filed, “and now it’s up to the justice
system to hold him accountable.”
Ms.
Alvarez, who like Mr. Emanuel is a Democrat, is in her second term as
the top prosecutor in the county that includes Chicago, the nation’s
third-largest city. She is seeking re-election next year, and faces
opposition in a Democratic primary in March.
Officer
Van Dyke has worked as a Chicago police officer since June 2001,
records show. He was put on administrative duty pending the
investigation, a spokesman for the Police Department said. Since at
least April, the shooting has been investigated by a team that includes
the F.B.I., the United States attorney’s office in Chicago and the Cook
County state’s attorney’s office. Legal experts said federal charges
were also possible.
Mr.
Herbert, the lawyer for Officer Van Dyke, said he was a highly
decorated officer. But records show that he had been the subject of
numerous complaints from residents, including allegations of using
excessive force and making racial slurs.
In
2013, a Hispanic man accused Officer Van Dyke and another officer of
striking him during a traffic stop and laughing at him because he had
hearing and speech impairments, claims that both officers denied. In
2011, a black man claimed that Officer Van Dyke had choked him and
twisted his arm during a drunken-driving arrest, which the officer
denied. The Independent Police Review Authority found that neither
allegation had merit.
Mr. Herbert said that no merit had ever been found by the authorities in any of the allegations against Officer Van Dyke.
The Chicago police are frequently involved in shootings, including 15 from July to September this year. But officers here rarely face charges for firing their weapons.
Dante Servin, a detective, is perhaps the most notable exception in recent memory. Mr. Servin was charged with involuntary manslaughter for a 2012 off-duty episode that resulted in the death of Rekia Boyd, an unarmed black woman. A judge acquitted Mr. Servin this year.
Another officer, John Gorman, was charged this month with aggravated discharge of a firearm
while off duty. Prosecutors accused Officer Gorman of being under the
influence of alcohol when he fired shots at two men, including an
off-duty suburban officer, who tried to intervene when Officer Gorman
was seen driving erratically.
The Videos That Are Putting Race and Policing Into Sharp Relief
A collection of videos that have led to nationwide
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race.
In
Officer Van Dyke’s case, the police were summoned to the city’s
southwest side one night in October 2014 in response to a report of a
man with a knife trying to break into vehicles in a trucking yard. Mr.
McDonald, who was holding a folding knife, refused to drop it when
officers told him to, the authorities have said, and he began walking or
jogging away. Officers began following him, and one called for backup
from any nearby police unit with a stun gun.
At
one point, Mr. McDonald, whose autopsy showed the presence of the drug
PCP in his system, pounded on the windshield of the squad car and
punctured its front tire with the knife, city officials say. When the
group of at least six officers and Mr. McDonald got to a busy stretch of
Pulaski Road, a multilane commercial stretch, the police dashboard
camera captured the final moments of the encounter.
Officials
said Mr. McDonald was a ward of the state at the time of his death, and
was attending an alternative school, Sullivan House High School. “He
was coming every day, joking and even giving hugs,” Thomas Gattuso, the
principal, said in an interview.
Michael
D. Robbins, a lawyer for Mr. McDonald’s family, said he had been
raised, in large part, by a grandmother, who died in 2013. Mr.
McDonald’s mother had been working to regain custody before his death,
Mr. Robbins said.
His
mother has not been able to bring herself to watch the video, he said,
and was “hunkering down” at the prospect of its release.
“She
is very, very distraught,” Mr. Robbins said Monday evening. “It’s a
reminder about the loss of her son — and it’s going to come as this big,
glaring, publicly displayed event. She is very emotional.”
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