Chicago to release video in shooting case

NBC 5’s Carol Marin reports.

Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said today that the Independent Police Review Authority probes all shootings by cops and the agency was given the case report and videos.

According to a Case Supplemental report filed March 16, 2015, Officer Jason Van Dyke is quoted as saying McDonald raised the knife and that he believed the teen was trying to kill him.

“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).

Van Dyke was charged with murder and was released from jail after posting 10% of his $1.5 million bond.

The internal police documents, it says, portrayed McDonald as threatening in a manner inconsistent with what is shown on the video.

McDonald, 17, was shot and killed by a Chicago officer in October previous year, eight days after Johnson.

The fallout from McDonald’s death – and the fact that it took 13 months for the police department to release the video of the shooting – has rocked Chicago, Emanuel’s office and led to Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy’s resignation. 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.

The officers’ portrayal of the incident, recorded in hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed reports, prompted police supervisors to rule at the time that McDonald’s death was a justifiable homicide and within the bounds of the department’s use of force guidelines. The Chicago Tribune reports U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang allowed a request by the city for a protective order to be placed on the video. He said that the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation was also ongoing.

The city of Chicago will release the dash cam video, which shows another deadly officer-involved shooting past year.

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. But one of the police reports said the knife’s “blade was in the open position”. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has called for an overall federal investigation of police department practices, which Democratic presidential candidates and local Illinois politicians have echoed.

His mother, Dorothy Holmes, says the dashcam footage of the shooting proves her son was slain, and is pushing for the video’s release to the public. Emanuel has since fired the police chief, expanded a body camera program and formed a task force.