Thousands protest against police shooting in Chicago

Protests are expected to continue to bring attention to what happened to McDonald.

There was an element of the surreal throughout the day.

The report by Slate goes on to say that the autopsy – which was only released after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request – tells a very different story.

Officers along the sidewalk formed a barrier of sorts between the protesters and stores and helped shoppers get through the doors.

Burger King district manager Jay Darshane told NBC: “We had no idea they were going to sit there and delete the files”.

“We believe injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, said J.D. Anderson, the pastor at Centennial Missionary Baptist Church on the city’s south side. “City administrations depend on these police departments to maintain law and order; city officials feel that antagonizing them may compromise this goal”.

Demonstrators block the entrance of Top Shop as they protest the shooting of Laquan McDonald along the Magnificent Mile November 27, 2015 in Chicago, Ill. Some stores along MI voluntarily locked their doors as the march went past. “[The protesters] are intimidating people who have nothing to do with this and that’s just not right”, he said.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about the tactic.

Just north of Water Tower Place, protesters reportedly grabbed barricades at the Best Buy on the first floor of the John Hancock Center and used the barriers to prevent shoppers from both entering and leaving. “And I’m personally grateful to the people of my hometown for keeping protests peaceful”. When they ordered him to drop the knife, he ignored them and walked away, down the street.

Organizers said the rally, led by activist-politician the Rev. Jesse Jackson and several state elected officials, was a show of outrage over the October 2014 death of Laquan McDonald, 17, and what they see as racial bias in U.S. policing. “How are they going to get out?”

McDonald was a 17-year-old black male who was shot 16 times by uniformed Chicago Police officers in the fall of 2014. It makes them less credible.

Several protesters were seen lying facedown on the ground in handcuffs, but a police spokesman said she hadn’t been informed of any arrests.

That’s particularly true in Chicago, where one “bad apple” too often has signaled a bushel of cover-ups and other problems underneath. But Chicagoans with long memories – like me – wonder whether the cash is reparations or a form of hush money. In response, close to 1,000 people marched in Minneapolis on Tuesday night, the same night that hundreds marched in Chicago against police violence.

“The path forward is to keep people united, to keep people watching out for each other, to try to teach people to treat each other with respect and kindness”. Rentz says she is in the city for a wedding. The union’s vice president, Jesse Sharkey, did take part. Yet the video and various actions taken before and after the shooting point to systemic and institutional problems that extend far beyond one allegedly trigger-happy cop. The officer, a 14-year veteran of the police department, had a history of civilian complaints of misconduct, according to data obtained by the Chicago-based watchdog group the Invisible Institute.

Kim Foxx, a former prosecutor, released a statement after Van Dyke was charged Tuesday, saying the delays in pressing charges were a “heinous disservice” to McDonald’s family and the criminal justice system as a whole. Some protesters are calling for the resignation of CPD Commissioner Garry McCarthy.