Hundreds hold protests in Chicago over death of black teenager

The teen stumbles and falls as he is hit by gunfire.

It has been well over a year since the killing of 17-year-old Laqaun McDonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke of the Chicago Police Department. Protesters are unhappy with how the city has handled the shooting death of Laquan McDonald. McDonald died a short time later.

Led by Jesse Jackson, protesters held signs reading “Stop Police Terror”, “White Silence = White Consent” and the like as they marched northward down the middle of Michigan Avenue on “Black Friday”, the traditional post-Thanksgiving day of shopping frenzy.

Khailid Parrett, a protester, said the protests are “about redistributing the pain”.

“Every democracy is also a dictatorship”, party member Grant Newburger instructed The Daily Caller in a brief interview. Cook County State’s Atty.

“The only thing new is that there’s a video of this shooting”, Scott said. “The video does not speak for itself”. Many prominent news outlets sought the dashboard video footage through Illinois’s Freedom of Information Act laws, but were denied.

Deciding whether to make official recordings public has also proved a thorny issue for city leaders.

The images are so disturbing that the City Council, acting on the recommendation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s top attorney, approved a $5 million settlement in April before McDonald’s family even filed a lawsuit. In Los Angeles, the LAPD generally does not publicly release recordings from cameras mounted in its patrol cars or on officers’ uniforms. The usual mantra, “unarmed black teenager”, is not used with respect to McDonald because he was carrying a knife, which he used to slash the tire of a squad auto. The officers are not responding. An autopsy showed McDonald had PCP in his system.

Prosecutors charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder on Tuesday, hours before the video’s release. That explains, for example, why Van Dyke remained on paid desk duty for 13 months before he was charged with a crime. The Review Board was not mentioned in this case but the use of excessive force or really any type of force seems unlawful if these were the only facts of the case. His attorney said Van Dyke feared for his life when he fired at McDonald and that the case should be tried in the courtroom, not in social media or on the streets.

“The testimony of that officer is going to be very, very compelling about why he did not perceive a deadly threat”, Obayashi said. However, Van Dyke claims he stood behind the driver, bending his arm backwards when the man refused to do the breathalyzer test. The Review Board sided with the officer again by claiming that there was insufficient evidence to support the driver’s complaint.

Local NAACP chapters joined the call for a federal investigation into the police department, CNN affiliate WGN said. Had she brought up charges against Van Dyke at least she would have appeared as having some interest in justice to the Black community.

At the North Face store, also in the John Hancock, employees reported the same barricading. Not long after the shooting, Chicago cops flooded Pulaski Road where the initial description of what took place was offered by the spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police officers. – Chicago politicians are calling for the police chief to resign after Tuesday’s release of a video showing a white officer killing a black teenager. Servin was acquitted on involuntary manslaughter charges this past April, when the trial was suddenly stopped by the judge in the case before the defense of Servin presented any witnesses. We’re trying to help them do what they want to do, quite frankly, and we’re going to do it in a professional manner; but we will not allow criminal behavior, quite frankly.