Laquan McDonald Police Report Appears to Differ From Dashcam Video

Several officers, including Jason Van Dyke who was charged with murder in 17-year-old Laquan McDonald’s death, said in official police reports that the boy approached officers armed with a knife.

“VD believed O was attacking w/knife”, said a report of Van Dyke’s account. Then, just six seconds after arriving on the scene, Officer Jason Van Dyke jumps out of his vehicle and open fires at McDonald as he appears to be veering away from the cops.

In typed notes from March’s report, Van Dyke told the detective that “McDonald raised the knife across his chest and over his shoulder, pointing the knife at Van Dyke”.

Van Dyke was charged with first-degree only hours before the department released the video. VD continued firing. O appeared to be attempting to get up, still holding knife.

One report said the teenager continued to move on the ground after he was fatally shot by Van Dyke. Two screenshots obtained by NBC Chicago and released this week show police officers sitting at a computer inside an adjacent Burger King, where reports indicate that footage of the events leading up to the shooting were erased.

In one report, Van Dyke is quoted as saying that from his training he knew that an assailant with a knife posed a deadly threat, possibly hurling the weapon at the officer.

Caption + This image provided by the Chicago Police Department shows an officer safety alert flyer the department issued in 2012 regarding a knife that’s really a gun. City officials fought in court for months to keep the video out of the public’s eye, before deciding in November not to fight a judge’s order.

A video that caused racial riots and created high-tension against police nationwide is now being reported as ‘doctored’.

The city of Chicago has responded as well, paying the McDonald family a $5 million settlement even before a wrongful death lawsuit was filed.

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

Van Dyke’s attorney, Dan Herbert, maintains the video doesn’t tell the whole story, and says the officer feared for his life and acted lawfully. The officers with Van Dyke on the night of the shooting have not been disciplined or put on desk duty.

Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said its in-house experts also determined the audio is not authentic.

With aftershocks from the release of dashcam video showing McDonald’s shooting still rumbling through Chicago, a dashcam video of yet another fatal police shooting is about to be released.

“If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action”, Guglielmi said.

Requests for comment to spokespeople for Emanuel, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and the police review authority weren’t immediately returned. One report said McDonald showed “irrational behavior”, such as ignoring verbal directions, “growling” and making noises. The autopsy on McDonald found that he had the drug PCP in his system.

Now hundreds of pages of Chicago police reports obtained by the Chicago Tribune show that police may have lied other times about the killing. For more than a year, the city actively delayed releasing police dash-cam footage of the officer continuing to fire even as McDonald crumpled to the ground.

Another contradiction that emerged with the release of the reports is whether McDonald’s knife was folded when officers recovered it at the scene.