When dashcam footage of the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was released by court order—13 months after the fatal encounter of October 20, 2014—officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder, 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, and one count of official misconduct. After what many in the public considered a cover-up to shield Van Dyke from prosecution, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Published in 2017, the DoJ report was damning: The CPD engages “in a pattern or practice of unreasonable force . . . in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” The killing of Laquan McDonald, the report acknowledged, was a “tipping point” for the city’s police force in its interactions with minority communities.
Ever since the video’s release on November 24, 2015, the shooting of Laquan McDonald has hung over Chicago politics like a threatening storm cloud, even as firings of high-level public officials, new appointments, and new initiatives made little dent in the street violence. In 2016, Chicago had more homicides (762) than the combined total of Los Angeles and New York City, with 10.4 million fewer people than those two metropolises.
The public protests in response to the McDonald shooting closed down swaths of the city at inflection points in the case’s progression. When the footage was first released, the large-scale demonstrations began. For several successive days after its release, culminating in a Black Friday “shopping boycott” on Michigan Avenue, protesters shut down roadways throughout the city while chanting “16 shots,” for the number of bullets fired at McDonald. They called for the summary firing of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, police superintendent Garry McCarthy, and Anita Alvarez, the state’s attorney, for their handling of the case and for the common suspicion that they had tampered with and subverted the judicial process. In the years that followed, Alvarez would lose her reelection bid, Emanuel would fire McCarthy, and Emanuel himself would announce, just as Van Dyke’s trial got underway this September, that he would not be seeking a third term in next year’s mayoral election.
The prosecution’s case in People v. Van Dyke centered on the video evidence; Van Dyke and his defense attorneys relied on his account of it and that of his fellow officers. One of the jurors (none of whom was identified by name) said as much: Van Dyke’s testimony “seemed kind of like he was finally giving the play after they had been rehearsing with him for weeks.”
Van Dyke had been part of a team of officers responding to a report of break-ins of cars on S. Karlov Avenue in Chicago’s Archer Heights neighborhood, one block over from where they would confront McDonald on a busy thoroughfare at around 10 p.m. In one police SUV, with lights flashing, were Van Dyke in the passenger seat and his partner, Joe Walsh, driving. The radio reports they heard said McDonald had a knife with a three-inch blade that he had used to slash the front passenger tire and damage the windshield of a police cruiser.
The video footage of the shooting contradicts the testimony offered by the officers involved, including Van Dyke and Walsh, as well as the police reports filed after the event. The official police report has Van Dyke “backpedaling,” but the footage shows Van Dyke moving closer and closer while shooting McDonald—as the teenager twists and falls to the ground. Van Dyke’s defense was that McDonald was “menacing him with a knife.” The jury disagreed. One juror said that the video clearly shows Van Dyke “stepping forward instead of retreating.” The prosecutors also argued that Van Dyke had said to Walsh, before reaching the scene, “We’re going to have to shoot the guy.” Van Dyke did so about six seconds after exiting his vehicle.
The verdict was read aloud at around 2 p.m. on Friday, October 5, with McDonald’s family in the courttoom. Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm. He wasn’t found guilty of official misconduct. He is expected back in court on October 31 for sentencing. Each count of aggravated battery could result in up to 30 years in prison, possibly served concurrently; the second-degree murder charge could result in 20 years behind bars.
As the verdict was announced, police throughout the city braced for protests. City Hall was lined with police officers guarding entrance doors. Across the street, approximately two dozen state police gathered around the James R. Thompson Center. I asked one of the state police officers what kind of protests they were anticipating. “Who knows?” he said. “This is state property, and we’re just here trying to keep it from being overrun.”
Black Lives Matter organizers recognized the verdict as a victory but also an occasion for more protest. And so concurrent with the announcement of the verdict, a few hundred protesters from various organizations filled an intersection on Michigan Avenue. One of the convening groups, CPAC: The Civilian Police Accountability Council, advocates “community control” of the police force. It “isn’t really much of a group,” a member of the National Lawyers Guild, a far-left-wing legal advocacy outfit, told me. “They wish it were,” he said, “but it isn’t.”
The Chicago chapter of a national group called Refuse Fascism also turned out on Michigan Avenue that afternoon. Its protest wasn’t as much about police violence as it was about President Trump. “F— Kavanaugh,” its constituency shouted, while other groups called for abolishing the police. Refuse Fascism’s blue pamphlets declared, “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, we REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America.”
But the incident that had focused so many passions on the issue of policing in Chicago was resolved on the first Friday of October. And the result was the best that many of the protesting groups could have hoped for—a guilty verdict for a guilty cop. They’ll now need to widen their aperture to shed light on something less rousing: how Chicago might come together to reduce citizen-on-citizen crime. But will they?
