Chicago Police Just Made a Shocking Claim About Laquan McDonald Video’s

City officials have released hundreds of pages of documents relating to the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald and the police investigation that followed.

The reports add to questions about the department’s handling of the shooting.

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. Protesters called on Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign for failing to press charges sooner against officer Jason Van Dyke.

Emanuel has said he didn’t see the video until it was released publicly.

Furthermore, the primary detective assigned to review the case, David March, wrote that he watched two dashcam videos and determined they were “consistent with the accounts of all the witnesses”. That video, which prompted the city to pay McDonald’s family $5 million without their filing a wrongful death lawsuit, shows McDonald briskly walking down the middle of the street when Van Dyke fired from the teenager’s left side. Once McDonald took his hands out of his pockets, McElligott noticed the knife. Emanuel said he did now know how the city planned to make the video public.At least five other officers also said McDonald moved toward them in a threatening way, but no one else fired their guns.

The auto then pulled further up, ahead of McDonald, and Van Dyke exited. He said McDonald “swung the knife toward the officers in an aggressive manner” before Van Dyke shot him and that he believed McDonald was “attempting to kill them”. Van Dyke’s partner, identified as Joseph Walsh, told an investigator that he repeatedly yelled “Drop the knife!” at McDonald and backed up as the teenager “continued to advance toward the officers”. Van Dyke, who shot McDonald 16 times, was charged with first-degree murder Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015.

Three officers (Walsh, Daphne Sebastian and Janet Mondragon) corroborated Van Dyke’s claim that McDonald was waving the knife and approaching the officers.

In this October 20, 2014 frame from dash-cam video provided by Chicago Police Department, Laquan McDonald falls to the ground after being shot by officer Jason Van Dyke in Chicago.

Officer Ricardo Viramontes said he saw McDonald “turned toward Van Dyke and his partner”. The widely released video (shown above) is from the auto of Officers Sebastian and Mondragon. Release of the video has led to a torrent of protest and criticism over the way Emanuel and his police department handled the investigation into the shooting.

The files include police reports, witness testimonies, evidence inventories and dozens of pages documenting the 16 bullet wounds that McDonald sustained that night.

Chicago authorities have not been able to explain why the footage released to the public, including from other squad cars on scene, doesn’t have audio when department technologies allow for it. Acting Superintendent John Escalante said Friday that he issued a reminder to all officers to check that equipment works each time they get into police cars. CPD’s case report and all videos were turned over to IPRA and state and federal prosecutors days after the shooting.