Chicago protesters call for Mayor Emanuel’s resignation

The reports written in shorthand refer to Van Dyke as VD and to McDonald as O, describing him as the “offender”, according to the Tribune.

He was charged with first-degree murder late last month, only hours before the department released the video under a court order and after keeping it from the public for more than a year.

The video, which prompted the city to pay McDonald’s family $5 million without it filing a wrongful death lawsuit, shows McDonald briskly walking down the middle of the street when Van Dyke fired from the teen’s left side.

At least five other officers on the scene that night corroborated a version of events similar to the one Officer Van Dyke, now charged with murder in the shooting, gave his supervisors: that Mr. McDonald was aggressively swinging his knife and was moving toward the police, giving Officer Van Dyke no choice but to start shooting.

Van Dyke’s partner, Joseph Walsh, said in the report that McDonald got to within 12 to 15 feet of Van Dyke and “he swung the knife at the officers in an aggressive manner” before he was shot.

Herbert, attorney for the Chicago police officer who fatally shot Laquan McDonald holds a new conference at the Law Offices of Herbert & Associates in Chicago on Friday, Nov. 20, 2015.

“VD believed O was attacking w/knife”, said a police report of Van Dyke’s account, as quoted by the Tribune.

The revelation will only heighten the scandal swirling around the Chicago Police Department. There is also the possibility of an investigation by the Justice Department into the department’s wider problems.

Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement late Friday that the city’s Independent Police Review Authority, not the Police Department, conducts all investigations of officer-involved shootings and that the agency was given the case report and videos.

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

Messages left for Emanuel’s spokeswoman, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’ spokeswoman and a police union weren’t immediately returned. Included in the reports is a December 2012 bulletin about such knives, attributed to an unnamed “Midwest intelligence organization” that warned officers to “remain cognizant of its threat to personal safety”. But one of the police reports said the knife’s “blade was in the open position”. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired police Superintendent Garry McCarthy last week. The autopsy on McDonald found that he had the drug PCP in his system. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has called for an overall federal probe of police department practices, which Democratic presidential candidates to local Illinois politicians have echoed.

The Chicago Police Department’s interim superintendent is warning officers they face discipline if they don’t make sure both the video and the audio of their squad vehicle dashboard cameras are working.