Chicago officials release reports in police shooting of teen

The manager of the fast-food restaurant has repeatedly claimed that police deleted 86 minutes of footage, while the officer have claimed the system “malfunctioned”.

The debate over the release of videos typically lines up around the U.S.as such: Police and prosecutors argue they should be withheld until the conclusion of investigations into whether the shootings were justified, while transparency advocates, journalists and activists say the public has a right to see the footage immediately.

With aftershocks from the release of dashcam video showing the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald still rumbling through Chicago, a dashcam video of another fatal police shooting is about to be released. At least one of the officers said in the report that the black teen advanced on the officers and swung his knife at them in an “aggressive, exaggerated manner” before he was shot and killed.

“In defense of his life, Van Dyke backpedaled and fired his handgun at McDonald, to stop the attack”, one document reads, according to the Associated Press (AP). For more than a year, the city actively delayed releasing police dash-cam footage of the officer continuing to fire even as McDonald crumpled to the ground. In them, Officer Van Dyke and his colleagues give their official account of what happened. Van Dyke stating that after he ordered McDonald to drop his knife.

“If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action”, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.

This description of events doesn’t appear to match the dashcam video of the incident released by the city on November 24.

Johnson, 25, was shot and killed by Officer George Hernandez in October 2014.

The Chicago Police Department’s new acting superintendent says he sent a reminder to officers to check audio recording equipment each time they get into a squad auto.

Johnson was riding in a auto that was pulled over by police.

The release of the footage triggered protests and calls for public officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to resign. “Shouldn’t nobody have to go through this pain over their kids”, Holmes told reporters Tuesday.

After hearing arguments from city lawyers over the McDonald video, a Cook County judge sided with a freelance journalist who earlier this year filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the video. The statements led police supervisors to rule McDonald’s death a justifiable homicide.

Many people who took to the streets questioned why it took so long to release the video.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Cook County Commissioners Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Richard Boykin and others demanded a sweeping investigation that would include the mayor’s office as well as that of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, in the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting.