A White Officer Shot a Black Teenager 4 Years Ago. A Changed Chicago Awaits a Verdict.
CHICAGO — Three years ago, grainy video of a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times upended this city. The police superintendent was
forced out, the prosecutor
lost her election, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel has since announced he is
not seeking re-election. Chicagoans were furious and a Justice Department investigation confirmed their anger, finding
far-reaching failures by the police, including rampant excessive force aimed at African-Americans and Latinos.
Now Chicago is awaiting a final chapter.
A jury must decide whether the police officer in the video, Jason Van Dyke, is guilty of murdering the teenager, Laquan McDonald. As closing arguments were made Thursday on the fifth floor of a county courthouse southwest of downtown, the case had become a proxy for
longstanding questions about police accountability. It has been nearly 50 years since a Chicago police officer was convicted of murder in an on-duty shooting, and the trial deliberations were being watched closely.
Public school officials encouraged teachers to discuss the case with their students, offering possible topics like “What does the trial and its outcome mean for Chicago?” Ministers and activists met to plan demonstrations in case Officer Van Dyke is not convicted.
Barricades were in place outside the courthouse, police officers were asked to work 12-hour shifts and cancel their days off, and City Hall officials said they had developed a 150-page action plan for every city agency in preparation for a possible public response to a verdict.
In some neighborhoods, a handful of yard signs read, “Praying For Our City #Justice4Laquan.” And at least one city alderman, Derrick G. Curtis, issued a “Special Alert” on Facebook, noting that a verdict could come soon, and urging residents to “help me keep our neighborhood safe.”
“There’s a real sense of anxiety when it comes to this case and what it says about relations between the police and residents,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Roman Catholic priest who leads a South Side parish. “There’s a segment of people who have almost completely given up their hope and belief in the system, and if nothing happens to the officer this time? There’s a whole lot of folks that are going to say, ‘That’s my last chance of trying to believe in justice.’ It’ll set the relationship back decades.”
At the center of the case are two people whose lives intersected for only seconds along a road on the Southwest Side on Oct. 20, 2014: Officer Van Dyke, 40, who joined the department 17 years ago and was described by a fellow officer as “your average Chicago police officer,” and Laquan, who had recently turned 17 and had struggled, spending time in foster care and juvenile detention and wrestling with the death of a great-grandmother who helped raise him.
After a truck driver reported someone breaking into vehicles in a parking lot that evening, police officers followed Laquan, who was carrying a three-inch pocketknife and refused to stop when they told him to. The pursuit — Laquan walking down the street and officers on foot and in squad cars behind him — ended when Officer Van Dyke arrived in a car, stepped out and shot him repeatedly, even as his body was crumpled on the street.
The shooting came during a national conversation over the treatment of young black men by white police; only a few months before, a white officer
shot and killed Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Mo. Still, Laquan’s death initially drew little public notice and only a few mentions in
local news media. Early reports from the police suggested that Laquan had lunged toward Officer Van Dyke with his knife, and some officers backed up that story in reports they filed.
What Chicagoans did not know at the time was that a video camera on the dashboard of a police car had captured the whole thing. The city waited 13 months to release the video, and
then only after a judge ordered it.
The video immediately set off protests, accusations of a broad cover-up and demands for change. The video did not match what the police said had happened; it showed Laquan continuing to walk along, away from a growing group of officers when Officer Van Dyke shot him. Officer Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder, though the charges were not filed until hours before the video was to be made public.
“That video opened a lot of people’s eyes,” said the Rev. Ira Acree, a West Side minister. “There were people who really didn’t know how bad it was out here, how corrupt it was, until that.”
Over three weeks of testimony in Officer Van Dyke’s trial,
prosecutors have said that the shooting never needed to happen, and have focused their case mainly on the video. Jurors have been shown the video, over and over, on large screens. Another officer testified that he arrived less than a minute after Laquan was shot, carrying a Taser, which dispatchers had called for and which might have defused the situation. Prosecutors also told jurors this: Of 10 officers there that night, no one but Officer Van Dyke fired their gun.
“It wasn’t the knife in Laquan’s hand that made the defendant kill him that night,” a prosecutor, Jody Gleason, said during closing arguments. “It was his indifference to the value of Laquan’s life.” She reminded jurors that Officer Van Dyke had acknowledged telling his partner, before they even arrived, that they would have to shoot the person who was being chased.
For its part, Officer Van Dyke’s defense team showed jurors its own video. It used laser-based technology to create an animation that, the team said, depicted what the events would have looked like from Officer Van Dyke’s perspective. Taking the stand in his own defense,
Officer Van Dyke testified, emotionally at times, that the dashboard camera video had not captured all that he could see that night. Laquan had a menacing look in his eye, the officer said, and angled the knife in his direction. Witnesses for the defense also spoke of Laquan’s behavior in the past, saying he had acted up while in juvenile detention and used drugs, though witnesses conceded that Officer Van Dyke did not know Laquan and would have known nothing about his background when he shot him.
Calling Laquan “the author, the choreographer of this story,” Daniel Herbert, Officer Van Dyke’s defense lawyer, said that his client acted reasonably and lawfully when he opened fire.
“Police are here to serve and protect,” he said. “They can’t retreat. They can’t run away like us.”
As the jury began deliberations on Thursday afternoon, attention to the trial, which has been live-streamed on local news websites for days, has seemed mixed. Some people said the years it had taken to get to trial had made the issue fade some, and that they were only vaguely aware. Others, particularly in some of the South Side’s predominantly black neighborhoods, said they were closely following the proceedings. Chicago, which has long wrestled with segregation and gun violence, has roughly equal numbers of white, black and Hispanic residents.
“Him getting off would just be almost a confirmation to a lot of people of color who feel like we are devalued here, we are discriminated against here,” said Asiaha Butler, a resident association leader in Englewood, a South Side neighborhood. “There’s so much racial bias here that no one wants to unpack and talk about.”
Some residents said it was unfair that unflattering parts of Laquan’s past had been a focus of attention but Officer Van Dyke’s past had not. There were indications that Laquan’s life might have been steadying before he died: His mother was working to regain custody, and his school principal said he was “coming every day, joking and even giving hugs.” Records show that Officer Van Dyke had at least 18 citizen complaints, including allegations of racial slurs and excessive force. In each case, he denied wrongdoing and was not disciplined.
Fallout from the video has forced changes in the Police Department, including new rules for use of force. But people in Englewood said little felt different.
