Restaurant video missing footage of Chicago police shooting

Dash-cam video released last week apparently shows Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times.

Chicago officials have released police reports in the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer revealing a narrative that contradicts what video footage depicts.

Chicago police reports on the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald last year offer a starkly different account from the dashcam video that triggered protests in the city.

In the report, Van Dyke said he continued to fire because it appeared McDonald was trying to get back up. O fell to the ground, continued to move/grasp the knife… “McDonald raised the knife across his chest and over his shoulder, pointing the knife at Van Dyke”. He described the video as dark and grainy, but said it “clearly shows that [Johnson] is running away from the police officer”.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the media Thursday that the city would drop its fight against the release of the video, and make it available sometime next week. The Chicago Sun-Times cited a source close to a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe as saying the Burger King security video system often broke down and had frequent gaps.

In the Johnson shooting, Officer George Hernandez said he opened fire on Johnson, 25, after the man allegedly pointed a gun at him.

Critics have also called for Emanuel and State Attorney Anita Alvarez to step down.

Chicago authorities have not been able to explain why the footage released to the public, including from other squad cars on scene, doesn’t have audio when department technologies allow for it. Acting Superintendent John Escalante said Friday that he issued a reminder to all officers to check that equipment works each time they get into police cars. He said the “crimes of a small number of officers” shouldn’t taint the whole police department, but that he should have known that a delay in releasing the video would raise suspicions because of the department’s “checkered history of misconduct”. Van Dyke has now been charged with first-degree murder.

Independent journalist Brandon Smith filed a lawsuit in August against the Police Department over the denial of his own Freedom of Information Act request for the recordings, resulting in Valderrama’s November 19 ruling.

Not releasing the video, creates further distrust between police and the public.

But public pressure in the McDonald case may have forced a change in the city’s approach.

The release of the footage, which doesn’t have sound, 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. The U.S. attorney’s office is investigating, and several officials have called for the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division to open a wider investigation of police practices, similar to ones conducted in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere. But Emanuel’s announcement, which came during a news conference, hit a week before a judge is to rule in the case. “On Nov. 24, 2015, the city released a video taken from the dashboard camera of a CPD vehicle”. He released the video 10 days after the shooting when he announced he was indicting Officer Ray Tensing, who has pleaded not guilty to murder and voluntary manslaughter.