This was originally posted on another blog on August 30, 2015. And now it's here.
Seventeen year old Laquan McDonald had
a juvenile record but was trying to turn his life around. He got a
job and enrolled at a local high school in Chicago. On the evening of
20 October 2014, though, something went wrong. He took PCP and went
out to steal from vehicles at a trucking yard.
The police responded to a call at 9:45
PM. They ordered Laquan to drop the knife he was using to slash
tires. He ignored their orders and walked away. The police followed
him through a Burger King parking lot and out onto a busy street
waiting for a taser to arrive.
According to the official account a
second patrol car showed up and Laquan again refused to drop his
knife. The police tried using their cars to box him in against a
construction fence but he punctured a tire, damaged a windshield, and
escaped back out onto the street.
The police now got out of their
vehicles, Laquan lunged at them, and one of the officers was forced
to shoot him in the chest. He was pronounced dead at 10:42 PM.
This police version of events was
simple and believable. NBC called it a "clear-cut case of
self-defense. From the beginning though, eyewitness accounts
contradicted the police version of events.
Alma Benitez said the police had the
situation under control and had no need to shoot Laquan. Another
witness said Laquan was "shying away" from police when he
was shot, not lunging toward them. One witness described the shooting
as an execution.
After the shooting police officers
visited the nearby Burger King and examined the security video. When
the Independent Police Review Authority tried to view this video the
next day they found it erased.
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***
The medical examiner's report raised
more questions. The police said Laquan was shot in the chest. The
Medical Examiner said he died of multiple gun shot wounds. When the
autopsy report was finally released four months later the public
learned that Laquan had been shot 16 times. Nine of these 16 shots
struck Laquan from behind and nine had a downward trajectory,
suggesting Laquan was on the ground when at least those were fired.
The dash cam video from the fatal night
has not been released but it was finally viewed by attorney's for the
family in February 2015. Their description of the video differs
markedly from the police story.
According to them the officer who shot
Laquan opened fire moments after arriving on the scene. Laquan spun
and fell into a fetal position with the first shot. After that, the
officer just kept shooting. Family attorney Michael Robbins says "You
can see in the video as he is lying on the ground, that he is being
shot."
The video allegedly shows the shots
fired from 12-15 feet away. Contrary to the police story the video
does not show Laquan "lunging" toward officers but rather
walking away at the time he was shot.
This description seems to be supported
by the fact that, after reviewing the video, the City Council
unanimously agreed to pay the family $5,000,000 to avoid a Federal
lawsuit. One of the conditions of the settlement is that lawyers for
the family are not allowed to release the video to the public.
The officer who shot Laquan is Jason
Van Dyke. In the past he has been accused of using racial epithets,
manhandling suspects, and pointing a gun at a suspect without
justification. Van Dyke said he feared for his life that night, but
none of the other five officers present fired.
The currently available evidence seems
adequate to conclude that Van Dyke is a bad cop who shot too soon and
too often.
For more information click on the links
below.
Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway
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