Protesters march on Mag Mile Christmas Eve

Several hundred protesters against police killings of black men marched on Thursday along Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, calling for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down and aiming to disrupt Christmas Eve shopping in a glittering, upscale commercial area.

There were no apparent injuries.

A group calling itself The Coalition for a New Chicago says the march will begin a noon at the south end of the Magnificent Mile shopping district and move north. Even body cameras – coming soon to more Chicago officers as part of a pilot program – depend on police flicking on the devices in time to film encounters with civilians.

Chicago has seen a steady stream of protests since late November, when the city released the video of Van Dyke, who is white, shooting McDonald, aged 17.

Herbert also said that policy changes in the Chicago Police Department, which Emanuel’s office has hinted at and may include more education, would be beneficial.

Demonstrators protesting police shootings of black men confronted last-minute holiday shoppers and travelers in California and the Midwest this week, seeing the crowds as an opportunity to draw attention to their cause. In many cases the largest inconvenience to shoppers appeared to come from bicycle-mounted police who whizzed along the sidewalk with their bicycle sirens blaring as they attempted to stay ahead of the protesters.

One activist, Pete White, said the demonstration was motivated in part by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s recent decision not to charge a California Highway Patrol officer who repeatedly punched a woman, Marlene Pinnock, along the Harbor Freeway.

“Someone have a Taser?” one officer is heard asking on the radio, then describing McDonald.

The case marks the first time a Chicago police officer has been charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty killing in nearly 35 years. But Emanuel and the department have faced heavy criticism over officers’ treatment of suspects.

Time and again, lawyers suing over alleged police misconduct have found that the Police Department failed to produce crucial video or audio from the storage system the city spent millions of dollars to implement.

Van Dyke had opened fire on McDonald and kept shooting after the teen crumpled to the ground.

WMAQ-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1m74IM6 ) that it obtained audio of dispatch calls through a Freedom of Information Act Request.

It remains unclear which officer requested the Taser or whether an officer with a stun gun arrived on the scene.