Activists call for Chicago Black Friday protest over police shooting video

“Too many have already died”, said Chapman, whose organization, the Chicago Alliance Against Racism and Political Oppression, is pushing for an elected, civilian police accountability council.

After days of protests, demonstrators were poised to disrupt Black Friday shopping with a march through the heart of the city’s most famous retail district.

The video shows him holding a knife when the police cars arrive and Mr Van Dyke emerges from his vehicle.

If Van Dyke is to be charged for the murder of McDonald, as he should, alongside him in the dock should be many others who did whatever they could to prevent exposure of his crime.

The video, however, shows the officer opened fire as McDonald backed away from officers.

Leaders of about a dozen community groups met Wednesday night to try to decide on a unified approach.

The shooting happened October 20, 2014 and many people are criticizing Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Cook County State Attorney Anita Alvarez for not charging the police officer sooner.

Van Dyke began his incarceration under protective custody at a hospital facility segregated from the general population of Cook County Jail, the county sheriff’s office said.

Alvarez said Tuesday she chose to announce the charges against Van Dyke earlier than planned because of the video’s release.

Malcolm London, a 22-year-old organizer with the Black Youth Project 100, was arrested on charges of aggravated battery to a police officer after allegedly punching one officer.

Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder hours before the release of the video on a judge’s orders Tuesday.

The police dashboard camera videos also shed new light on how the events unfolded leading up to McDonald’s death by showing police response to the incident from new perspectives.

Several protesters said they were parents of black men who also had been shot and killed by Chicago police.

The graphic video was only made public after a judge ordered it to be released. The police union objects to its release.

Authorities said McDonald was carrying a pocket knife and had the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his system at the time.

The killings – some of which were captured on video – were a factor in the rise of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement, and have become an issue in the November 2016 United States presidential election campaign.

Van Dyke’s lawyer Daniel Herbert said his client would prevail in court. He said the case needs to be tried in a courtroom, “not in the streets or in the media”.

McDonald’s family called for calm, as did city authorities and black community leaders.

“And from everything we’ve learned, compulsively at every level, from the cops on the scene to the highest levels of government, they responded by circling the wagons and by fabricating a narrative that they knew was completely false”, Kalven said. Don’t resort to violence in Laquan’s name.

“If we do not hear from the mayor, there will be a uprising starting on Friday at the Magnificent Mile”, said one protestor.

In Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, family appeals for peace were not always heeded.

Among the marchers was 73-year-old Frank Chapman of Chicago, who said the disturbing video confirms what activists have said for years about Chicago police brutality.

Obama says he is personally grateful to the people of his hometown – Chicago – for keeping protests peaceful. “We want new leadership”, Alderman Roderick Sawyer told a news conference.

A crowd of chanting protesters is continuing demonstrations around downtown Chicago over the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer.

Nearly all shootings, fatal and non-fatal, are found to be justified.