Officer Jason Van Dyke to Enter Plea

Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke pleaded not guilty to the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald Tuesday.

The Associated Press reports that Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago officer accused the shooting death of a Black teenager, pleaded not guilty to murder charges on Tuesday.

Van Dyke, who has been suspended from the police force, is expected to enter a plea on first-degree murder and official misconduct charges. He was freed from Cook County Jail after posting the necessary 10% of his $1.5 million bond.

Van Dyke’s arraignment comes a few days after the city of Chicago was dealing with the aftermath of another police-involved shooting, one that left a college student and a mom of five dead. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he thought releasing it would jeopardize a federal probe of the case, but a judge found in the reporter’s favor and the video became public in November 2015.

Van Dyke last appeared in court December 18, running a gantlet of protesters and TV cameras outside the Leighton Criminal Courts building. “In Cook County it hasn’t been done in decades”, Herbert said.

Van Dyke’s defense attorney, Dan Herbert, said his client “hanging in there” and wants to tell his side of the story so that he’s not seen “as this cold-blooded killer”.

Prior to his arrest, Van Dyke was the subject of at least 20 excessive force complaints; one of them resulting in the accuser being awarded $350,000 in 2007. (LeGrier was apparently suffering from “emotional issues”, but per the Chicago Tribune, it’s unclear if cops knew this when responding to the 911 call.) Still, the tension spilled over at a vigil for LeGrier on Sunday night, where one of Emanuel’s aides was allegedly assaulted by a man who first approached the aide, saying, “The police are killing us”.

Herbert also said that policy changes in the Chicago Police Department, including more education, would be beneficial. A Washington Post analysis earlier this year found that, since 2005, only 54 officers were charged for fatally shooting someone while on duty, representing a small fraction of the thousands of fatal police shootings in that time.

Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in October 2014. Police opened fire after he veered away from vehicles. The retention vote is likely to happen before Van Dyke’s trial – first-degree murder cases rarely go to trial in Cook County within a year.

High-profile killings of black men by mainly white police officers since mid-2014 have triggered waves of protests across the country and fueled a civil rights movement under the name Black Lives Matter.

“I need someone to prove me wrong by bringing justice in the Jason Van Dyke case”.

Another police shooting over the weekend has sparked further criticism of the department.