Chicago mayor fires police superintendent

Emanuel says the task force is necessary after Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, fatally shot Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old, 16 times in 2014, a video of which was released last week and set off protests.

Chicago police initially said that McDonald was high on the hallucinogen PCP, was acting erratically and had lunged at officers with a knife when he was shot dead.

In a press release, the mayor’s office said the task force “will review the system of accountability, training and oversight that is now in place for Chicago’s police officers”.

But dash-cam video of the shooting shows an officer shooting the teen several times as he appeared to walk away from police.

On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired the city’s police superintendent, saying the city had lost trust in the police department.

Emanuel, a former three-term congressman and chief of staff to President Obama, had resisted releasing the video, citing ongoing state and federal criminal probes. “Chicago can not move ahead and rebuild trust between the police and the community without an outside, independent investigation into its police department to improve policing practices”, Madigan said in a statement Tuesday. Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has said the 3-inch blade recovered from the scene had been folded into the handle. Right before the video’s release, prosecutors announced they would charge Van Dyke with murder.

Riots, protests and national backlash have followed the release of a police dashcam video showing the fatal shooting of the 17-year-old McDonald.

The manager affirmed both the indoor and outdoor cameras were working properly the night of McDonald’s shooting death, and that four or five police officers came into the store, specifically to delete the tape. But knowing the intense public anger that the sight of the “chilling” video would generate, she announced the charges before the video’s release in an effort to encourage calm. “The police department planted that gun because there’s no way anything would have stayed in Ronald Johnson’s hand after he was shot”, Oppenheimer said. He said that fellow officers have donated an undisclosed sum to a bail fund set up by Van Dyke’s wife.

“We are here because we are, as a city, as a citizenry, as a nation, grieving the death, the senseless, tragic death, of Laquan McDonald”, one marcher told Chicago’s NBC affiliate.

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. The university shut down Monday (Nov. 30) in response to the threat but has since re-opened.

Van Dyke, wearing a black hoodie, got hugs from supporters after his family posted the required amount of his bond.

“I felt that at least the university was taking all the precautions to keep us… safe”, she said.

It took more than a year for the video to be released and Van Dyke to be charged.