Chicago police officer who shot black teen 16 times charged with murder
Chicago police officer who shot black teen 16 times charged with murder
State’s attorney says officer Jason Van Dyke’s actions as seen in video of shooting of Laquan McDonald ‘were not justified or the proper use of deadly force’
Laquan McDonald, the 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke on 20 October 2014. Photograph: Courtesy of the family
Zach Stafford in Chicago and agencies
Tuesday 24 November 2015 19.51 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 25 November 201501.35 GMT
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A white
Chicago police officer has been charged with murder over the shooting death of a black teenager, just one day before a deadline by which a judge has ordered the city to release a squad-car video of the incident.
Veteran officer Jason Van Dyke was indicted on Tuesday on a first-degree murder charge after shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. The officer was denied bail at a hearing in Chicago’s main criminal courthouse hours after the state’s attorney, Anita Alvarez, announced the charges against him.
Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. Photograph: Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office/Reuters
City officials and community leaders have been bracing for the release of the video, fearing an outbreak of unrest and demonstrations similar to what occurred in Ferguson, Baltimore and other cities after young African American men were killed by police. The judge
ordered the dash-cam recording to be released by 25 November after city officials had argued for months that it could not be made public until the conclusion of several investigations.
At a press conference before the video’s official release, Alvarez said the officer’s actions “were not justified or the proper use of deadly force by an officer”.
“I have absolutely no doubt that this video will tear at the hearts of Chicagoans,” she said.
Documents filed in court describe the video’s contents, in which the teen is said to be shown walking away from officers on a Chicago street. As McDonald turns away, Van Dyke takes one step towards the teen and begins to fire his gun, the description says.
For 14 to 15 seconds, according the documents prepared by the state’s attorney’s office, the officers unloads his entire gun into the teen, who spends 13 seconds laying face down on the pavement with his arms and legs jerking from the shots making contact with his body. Three clouds of smoke appear during the incident that indicate shots hitting the pavement, according to officials.
Of the eight or more officers on the scene, Van Dyke is the only one to have discharged his weapon.
“With release of this video,” Alvarez said, “it’s really important for public safety that the citizens of Chicago know that this officer is being held responsible for his actions.”
This undated autopsy diagram shows the location of wounds on the body of Laquan McDonald. Photograph: AP
Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, said in a statement that Van Dyke violated “professional standards” and also the “moral standards that bind our community together”.
“Rather tahn uphold the law, he took the law into his own hands and it’s up to the justice system to hold him accountable,” Emanuel said. “But his actions are in no way a reflection of the dedication and professionalism that our police officers exemplify every day and that our residents expect throughout our city.”
Van Dyke is the first on-duty officer to be charged with murder while working for the Chicago police department in nearly 35 years.
Since the death of McDonald, the Chicago police union and the lawyer representing the officer have maintained that he felt that McDonald presented a serious danger to Van Dyke and other officers.
“I can’t speak to why the [other] officers didn’t shoot,” the lawyer representing Van Dyke, Daniel Herbet, told reporters on Friday,
according to the Chicago Tribune. “But I certainly can speak to why my client shot, and it is he believed in his heart of hearts that he was in fear for his life, that he was concerned about the lives of [other] police officers.”
Since the incident, Van Dyke has been on paid desk leave while both federal and state investigations into the incident took place.
According to a freedom of information request
by the Chicago Tribune, the veteran officer has had at least 15 complaints filed against him while working in high-crime neighborhoods, for accusations including using racial epithets and pointing a gun at an arrestee without justification.
In 2007, the officer was involved in a traffic stop in which he and his partner were found to have used excessive force on a man with no prior convictions, leading to a $350,000 award for damages in the case, the Tribune reported.
Chicago police also moved late on Monday to discipline a second officer who had shot and killed an unarmed black woman in 2012, in another incident causing tensions between the department and minority communities. Superintendent Garry McCarthy recommended firing officer Dante Servin for the shooting of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd, saying Servin showed “incredibly poor judgment” even though a jury had acquitted him of involuntary manslaughter and other charges last April.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel called together a number of community leaders on Monday to appeal for help calming the emotions that have built up over the McDonald shooting.