Four more Laquan McDonald police dashcam videos released

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, who had shot McDonald, has been charged with first degree murder and turned himself into authorities. Hundreds of Chicago residents, upset by the video, took to the streets Tuesday night.

A light rain fell Wednesday night as the crowd continued to march and disrupt traffic through downtown streets.

All told, the videos show at least eight police vehicles responding to the shooting scene, and now the Emanuel administration has released videos from five of those vehicles.

The clip, once it was released this week after 13 months, shows that rather than lunging at officers, Mr McDonald appears actually to be walking away from them before Van Dyke opens fire. Another officer was seen kicking the knife away from where the suspect lay unmoving in the street.

“I want them to look me in the eye and recognize just because they have a badge doesn’t mean I’m someone they can treat like dirt”, a protester said.

Twenty misconduct complaints were made against Van Dyke in the past four and a half years – but none led to disciplinary action from the Chicago Police Department, according to research by Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor and expert on police accountability issues. Van Dyke shot 17-year-old McDonald multiple times within 30 seconds of his arrival. The officer has been working with the police force for 14 years.

Only one of the five police dashboard camera videos that the Emanuel administration released shows the shooting of McDonald, the same video the mayor was forced to release under an order by a Cook County judge. Van Dyke, he said, “truly was in fear for his life as well as the lives of his fellow police officers”.

Dean Vanriper, 38, of Murrieta, Calif., was charged with a felony count of possession of a controlled substance, misdemeanor count of unlawful use of a weapon for being in possession of a stun gun, and one misdemeanor count of possession of a deadly weapon for being in possession of a knife, police said.

Dan Herbert, Van Dyke’s attorney, has argued the video alone is not enough to determine if Van Dyke “acted inappropriately” when he fatally shot McDonald, though he has described the footage as “graphic and violent” and “difficult to watch”.

They repeated “16 shots” as they calmly walked down the main road, and “We hear the shots bang, the police are a gang”. “The question is, why are they not being charged?”

The protests that began Tuesday evening and extended into Wednesday morning were largely peaceful, and there was no damage to private property, police said.

Demonstrators are calling for an independent investigation into the case and are questioning why it took more than a year for authorities to release the video to the public, and to bring charges against the officer.

Local NAACP chapters joined the call for a federal investigation into the Police Department, CNN affiliate WGN said.

“Laquan McDonald was a ward of the state, killed by an officer of the state in a public place”, said the Rev. Marshall Hatch, co-chairman of the Leaders Network of Chicago, a nonprofit activist group.

“We need as a city to get to a point where young men see an officer and don’t just see an officer with a uniform and a badge… and for police see a young man not as a potential problem, as a risk, but also an individual worthy of their protection”, he said.