Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel To Announce Police Task Force

Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, imprisoned for fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, left jail on Monday night.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who had stood by Superintendent Garry McCarthy through the week, announced his decision during a news conference in which he discussed the creation of a new police accountability task force.

Panarese sat silently at the front of the packed courtroom Monday, leaning his head on his fist as he watched a few minutes of silent, grainy dashcam video playing on a laptop computer.

In the audio-free video, McDonald can be seen walking down the middle of a four-lane street.

It is the first time a Chicago police officer has been charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty fatality in more than 30 years. Prosecutors had asked for no bond.

The University of Chicago may have felt it had no choice but to take the extreme step of closing for an entire day after an online threat against whites on campus that authorities say was motived by the police shooting of a black teenager, security experts said. Protests that followed, as well as heightened awareness about campus shootings elsewhere and the recent attacks in Paris, may have forced the university’s hand, said one expert. Van Dyke fired 13 of the shots while McDonald was on the ground, the video shows. The university closed the school on Chicago’s South Side and canceled classes Monday after receiving an online threat that 16 white men on campus would be killed.

Wearing handcuffs, leg irons, and a greenish grey prison uniform, Jason Van Dyke stepped into a Cook County courtroom looking like numerous suspects he had arrested over the years.

“The officer went into the Burger King, and he erased all seven of those files”, said Futterman, who aggressively lobbied for the release of a related video taken by the police dashcam.

Angelo said Monday it appeared McDonald “squared his shoulders” toward the officers when Van Dyke started shooting.

“There are certain things that I know that, quite frankly, nobody else knows”. Van Dyke’s family posted the $150,000 bond, 10 percent of the bail amount. McDonald had PCP in his system and was carrying a 3-inch folding knife, and had slashed the tires of a police vehicle before he was shot near a busy intersection of 41st and Pulaski.

“He is very scared about the consequences that he’s facing”, Herbert said.

Alvarez said last week that she had decided a few weeks earlier to charge Van Dyke with murder and was planning to announce charges in a month.

McCarthy appeared on NBC Chicago Tuesday morning where he admitted that the initial press release on McDonald’s shooting was “mistaken” but added that there was little he could do once a federal investigation was launched. Five other officers, who were dispatched to the scene after police received a 911 call that McDonald was brandishing a knife and had been breaking into cars, did not fire their weapons.