The video of Laquan McDonald’s last moments shows him strutting down the center of a city street at night, past several police officers who had been called to corral him. He acts a bit like a crazy man, and he is carrying a small knife.
Yet even bearing in mind that that this 17-year-old is high on PCP (as toxicology tests later showed) and that he is far from a model citizen, the tape shows that he never lunges at or even moves toward the officers. In fact, he moves diagonally away from them as he strides past. But then he suddenly spins around and hits the ground, having been shot by a police officer.
Even at this point in the video, the viewer must wonder if perhaps he missed something. There is still a shred of doubt. Perhaps Officer Jason Van Dyke really did feel threatened for just a second, even if he was mistaken.
But after that, when you see the additional bullets hit McDonald twitching helplessly on the ground, you realize just how immense and egregious a fraud has been perpetrated by the Chicago Police Department and all of its elected enablers.
McDonald was shot 16 times by the police on Oct. 20, 2014. Immediately afterward, Chicago officers entered a nearby Burger King and allegedly erased 86 minutes of footage from its outdoor surveillance cameras, beginning just before the shooting took place. No attempt was made to argue that the shooting was justified. After it happened, the city paid a $5 million settlement to McDonald’s family before they could even sue. Elected leaders said nothing about what had happened. No footage was voluntarily released.
Fortunately for those seeking justice, the dashcam video from a police cruiser with a clear view of the event was not erased. It was a year later that the video was finally made public, and that was only because freelance journalist Brandon Smith sued to have it released.
Chicago’s leaders are now patting themselves on the back for holding the shooter accountable; Officer Van Dyke has, a year after the slaying, been indicted for murder. But this happened not because of officials’ efforts, but in spite of them. Despite the the fact that there were many police witnesses to what happened, no officer came forward to reveal the gross wrong that had been perpetrated. No politician demanded that the video be released. It should be remembered that Mayor Rahm Emanuel was up for re-election just four months before the killing, and could not have won without support from the city’s black leadership.
If not for Smith’s lawsuit, this video would still be hidden, and Van Dyke would be on patrol.
This incident is a reminder that Chicago remains a cesspool of unaccountable government and rank corruption. It is also a reminder that, even if most police officers are good people, there are still too many who assume they can get away with anything, and others who let them.
This has to change.
The rule of law is America’s greatest treasure, the source of her stability, prosperity and freedom. This sort of incident and cover-up threatens it. Every citizen must be able to trust the police.
A lot of lies are told about police brutality. The fabricated narrative about the death of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., last year, is a case in point. But the case of Laquan McDonald in Chicago shows that not all complaints are false. Some of them are shockingly true. It’s officialdom that has been telling the lies, and that is a whole lot worse.
