In response, Chicago Tribune reporter Brandon Smith filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the police department in May, asking to see all video related to the shooting. He also asked the attorneys for McDonald’s family to share with him the copy they had received from the police. They were under no legal obligation to keep it secret. They refused. Though it was not in writing, they had promised the city they wouldn’t release it until the city had filed criminal charges. McDonald’s mother, they said, supported their decision not to release the only true depiction of what happened the night her son was killed. The police department stonewalled Smith and the Chicago Tribune for months over the videotape before denying their request altogether on August 4. Smith and his newspaper filed a lawsuit for release of the video the next day. They ultimately received a court date, and attorneys for the city and for the Tribune made their arguments before Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama. Valderrama had been appointed to his seat by the governor in 2007, then reappointed in 2011, and again in June 2014. He was widely respected as fair and impartial. As the courtroom drama played out, activists, civic leaders, and many Chicago residents grew increasingly impatient with State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. Alvarez, who had refused to indict cops in several other high-profile shootings, had failed to bring charges against Van Dyke, more than a year after the McDonald shooting. Even now, she continuously told the media, her office was still investigating McDonald’s death.
Thursday, November 19, 2015, was unseasonably warm for usually frigid Chicago. Temperatures rose to 44 degrees and the sun was out most of the day. Usually by this time of the year, the city was blanketed with six inches of snow and locals were bundled under layers of clothing to protect themselves against the cold. Those in the media, the police department, and at City Hall awoke anxious that day. Judge Valderrama was scheduled to announce his decision on whether to order the city to release the police dashcam video. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration had tried desperately to keep the video hidden. Emanuel had known what was on it for months. In private conversations, he called the shooting “profoundly hideous… It’s a shock to your conscience of what happened, and it should not have happened.” Still, he fought its release at every turn. He wanted the tape concealed for fear that it might damage his run for reelection. It could also hurt the court’s ability to empanel an unbiased jury in any criminal trial. Possibly a bigger concern was the turmoil that could engulf the city once it got out. So far, he had succeeded in keeping it under wraps. On the day before the ruling, Emanuel and his staff were reading statements for release, whichever way the decision went. His staff carefully edited and reedited the text, looking for the most precise language. When the judged handed down his ruling that morning, an aide in the city’s Law Department dashed off a hurried email to Emanuel’s office. “We lost,” it said.
Valderrama ordered the city to release the video by November 24, just two days before Thanksgiving. His announcement sent people across the city into a frenzy. The police department went on high alert. It began marshaling its forces. Plainclothes officers were asked to wear their uniforms to maintain a larger police presence on the street through the week of the video release. They began mapping out strategies for the demonstrations that were sure to come. Mayor Emanuel began reaching out to religious leaders, asking them to carry a message of nonviolence to their members and others. One of them was the Reverend Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina’s, the prominent antiviolence activist on the South Side. The mayor wondered if, when the video was released, Pfleger would be a voice for peace. Or would he call for civil disobedience?
“I never, ever, ever believe in violence being the response,” Pfleger said. “Of course, I was going to call for peace. I’m a follower of Dr. [Martin Luther] King. I believe in the power of nonviolence. Civil disobedience, yes. But nonviolence. If we respond with violence, then we are no better than the perpetrators we’re angry with. There should be no violence.”
Community activist Andrew Holmes said he and other leaders also planned to spread a message of peace and keep riots from breaking out. Chicago should be an “example city,” he said. Still, Pfleger and others did not back away from calling for protests. Pfleger urged his parish members during his homily the Sunday before the video release to lead the protest, drawing on the legacy of civil disobedience during the 1960s civil rights movement.
“If you really want to make a statement, Black Friday is coming up. The number one business day,” he said. “Don’t shop on Black Friday, and go down to Michigan Avenue and sit down in the street and block the street on Michigan Avenue with civil disobedience peacefully, and say, ‘Business as usual can’t go on while our children are dying.’”
With each day prior to the deadline for release of the video, the tension mounted, even as far away as the White House in Washington, D.C. On the weekend before the release, President Barack Obama’s aides emailed Emanuel’s staff to ask for more information on the case. Emanuel had served as Obama’s chief of staff before running for mayor of Chicago. Elias Alcantara, the White House’s senior associate director for intergovernmental affairs, sent an email that said, “We’ve been tracking the media coverage of the Laquan McDonald case and would like an update. Do any of you have a minute to jump on the phone and provide an update on the situation? Hoping to get an update to the team here later this afternoon.”
“Yes,” David Spielfogel responded. Spielfogel was Emanuel’s senior adviser. “Can update you later when I’m out of meetings. Around 3 your time?” Melissa Green, the head of Emanuel’s Washington office, followed up by noting that the chief of staff to Attorney General Loretta Lynch had also been briefed. Meanwhile, Emanuel’s senior aides prepared the mayor for a Monday conference call with religious and community leaders, emails show. Various drafts of both the invitation and the script from which Emanuel would read during the call were sent around.
On Tuesday, November 24, Officer Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder. Hours later, the city released the police dashcam video of the shooting. The timing of the charges confirmed the suspicions in the minds of many that the state’s attorney had had no intention of filing charges, and only did so now that her hand was forced by the footage. I got a call from CNN shortly after the video was released. Producers sent me a copy of the video and asked me to analyze the contents for an upcoming show. I had not seen the video previously, but I had followed the accounts of what police said happened that night. When I saw the footage, I was stunned. I thought I had seen the worst when I saw the video of a North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer shoot a fleeing Walter Scott in the back after a traffic stop and then place a taser near his body. After seeing the McDonald dashcam video, I was angry, furious. Somebody needed to go to jail, and not just Van Dyke. I’ve been a use-of-force trainer with ATF and for numerous police departments, and, as I told my CNN anchor, this shooting was inconsistent with any use-of-force training standards that I had ever been exposed to.
The footage laid bare all the lies told by numerous police officers and their superiors about the incident. McDonald wasn’t walking toward the police when he was shot. Instead, he was walking away from them. He was not swinging a knife wildly or flailing his arms. He did not raise his arm with the knife across his chest or point it toward Van Dyke. He didn’t make any threatening moves toward Van Dyke. Van Dyke did not “fall back” and start shooting in fear for his life. No, McDonald didn’t move to get up after he was shot. He didn’t raise the knife toward Van Dyke. Instead the video showed that Van Dyke fired 6 seconds after getting out of his cruiser with his gun drawn and moving directly toward McDonald. It showed McDonald being shot and immediately collapsing onto the street. It showed that 14 seconds passed from the time Van Dyke fired the first shot to the final shot, and, for 13 of those seconds, McDonald was lying on the ground.
Mayor Emanuel gave a statement in response to the video.
“We hold our police officers to a high standard,” he said. “Obviously
, in this case, Jason Van Dyke violated both the standards of professionalism that comes with being a police officer, but also basic moral standards that bind our community together. Jason Van Dyke will be judged through the court of law. That’s exactly how it should be.”
Considering all that had transpired over the previous year, Emanuel’s words rang hollow. The next day, demonstrators—black, white, Hispanic, young, old, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, college students, high school dropouts, scientists, day laborers, college professors, fast food workers, lawyers, defendants, health care workers, janitors, business owners, and retail employees—poured into the streets. They blocked LaSalle Street in front of City Hall, demanding that Emanuel and the state’s attorney resign and the police chief be fired. They lined up along Michigan Avenue, the city’s “Magnificent Mile,” and blocked traffic with chants, shouts, and raised clenched fists. Stunned shoppers and tourists gawked as the demonstrators lined downtown streets, armed with a sea of signs. Six women demonstrated together, each carrying a billboard with a lighted letter of McDonald’s first name, L-A-Q-U-A-N. Other signs read, “Black Boys Matter,” “Fire Rahm,” “No More KKKiller Cops,” “Justice for Laquan McDonald; Arrest Rahm Now,” “Stop Police Terror,” “16 Shots,” and “I Am Laquan.” Protestors locked arms and blocked traffic on Randolph Street, at Harrison and State streets, and at the intersection of Franklin Street and Wacker Drive. They waded onto a major freeway and temporarily halted startled motorists. Some unleashed their anger toward individual officers, cursing them and shouting angrily into their faces.
Twitter lit up:
Johnetta Elzie
I never thought I could see anything worse than the footage of Walter Scott’s murder. I was very wrong.
Pej Vahdat
I’m absolutely disgusted. RIP #LaquanMcDonald my thoughts and prayers are with his family. But that does nothing. This has to stop.
Lauren Houston
If you do not have your eyes open and cannot see the police brutality and murders going on, then God help you.
Meira Gebel
Outraged, hurt and astounded at the news of the death of #LaquanMcDonald. Currently standing in solidarity with #Chicago and humanity…
2:00 AM—Nov 25, 2015 Calabasas, CA
Andrea Zopp
I was a prosecutor for 13 years, this investigation did not need to take 13 months #LaquanMcDonald
Shaun King
Average investigation length when a police officer has been killed in 2015 before an arrest is made = 38 hours. #LaquanMcDonald = 400 days
Demonstrations, large and small, would continue for days that would stretch into months, into March 2016, and sporadically through the second anniversary of the shooting. The political fallout was immediate. A week after the video footage of the shooting was released, Emanuel fired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.
“At the end of the day, [city residents] didn’t like the results, and somebody had to take the fall, and somebody had to take the hit,” McCarthy would say later about his firing.
Five days later, then–US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the Justice Department would launch an investigation into Chicago’s policing. A week after the video’s release, Emanuel announced the creation of the Task Force on Police Accountability. It would study the processes, oversight, and training at the police department, and make recommendations, he explained. A day later, Van Dyke was indicted on six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct. By then, Emanuel’s approval ratings had plummeted into the teens. The state’s attorney would ultimately be voted out of office.
By the end of 2015, many speculated that things could not get much worse for Chicago’s residents and law enforcement. They were wrong. By this time the following year, the city would be ravaged by a wave of violence and murder nearly unprecedented in the city’s history and residents’ relationship with police, particularly among the African-Americans and Hispanics who needed them most, would be frayed almost beyond repair.
11.
DAMAGE CONTROL
Eddie Johnson, like every other officer in the Chicago Police Department, was watching anxiously to see who would be their next boss. Mayor Rahm Emanuel had thrown former Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy under the bus in the wake of the protests and demonstrations following the release of the Laquan McDonald video, the video that Emanuel had used all his powers to keep secret for over a year. With the video out, somebody had to go, and it was McCarthy. Now, the department needed a new leader. Johnson, a 27-year department veteran, had a little more at stake than most. He had been deputy chief in charge of all patrol units in the nation’s second-largest police department for the past four years. A new superintendent might want his own person in that spot. So, Johnson nervously awaited the outcome with the rest of the department.
The first step in finding the new head of the department fell to the Chicago Police Board, nine people Emanuel had personally selected. It was their task to sift through 39 people nationwide who applied for the job and come up with a handful of the best candidates from which the mayor would select the top cop. For the next three months, they would conduct dozens of interviews and pore over hundreds of pages of essays and papers from candidates explaining their qualifications and their goals for the department. They carefully investigated the applicants’ competence and character. John J. Escalante was serving in the first months of 2016 as the interim superintendent after McCarthy was dismissed. He applied for the permanent position, but was turned down. Johnson had been rooting for him to become the first Latino to head the department. It would be a difficult job, no matter who got it. Murders and violent crime had spiked dramatically and begun to wash over parts of the city. The cover-up and subsequent release of the video of the McDonald shooting had created a huge gulf between black and white Chicagoans and the police. In response, police had begun to hunker down, refusing, in some cases, cops said, to do their jobs.
The choice to head a police department is always contentious in large cities. It almost always comes down to this question: Does the city need more of the same or something new? Some want a chief who will maintain the status quo, a person with deep roots in the city who understands the city’s unique communities and will ensure that the system continues to function largely as it has in the past. Others want a change agent, an outsider not bound by loyalties, who will institute new policies that will be fairer and more inclusive. No matter which desire prevails, the final choice inevitably will rankle some or all the city’s constituencies.
African-Americans and Latinos want a leader who will bring more fairness to policing, who is sensitive to the challenges of the city’s poorer neighborhoods, and who wants to end the historical animus and distrust that characterize the relationship between their communities and the police. White residents principally want to feel safe from crime. Issues of fairness, respect, and courtesy traditionally have not been a problem for them. They want a police department that is accessible and responsive, and will protect them from things that are dangerous, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable. Commercial and civic leaders want someone who understands the importance of protecting the city’s business interests and the role police and crime rates play in the city’s image as a place for businesses and families interested in relocating.
The Chicago Police Board announced its three finalists in March 2016 with a press conference at the public library named in honor of the city’s former black mayor, Harold Washington. The media gathered, as did other stakeholders, academics, community activists, business leaders, politicians, and curious citizens. The board’s members sat behind a banquet table covered by a black cloth, each identified by the white placards placed neatly in front of them. The board’s president and a former federal prosecutor, Lori Lightfoot, made clear the group’s priority as she addressed the audience.
“Things have to change from the inside out,” she told the audience. “The next superintendent must dem
onstrate leadership in a way that welcomes and demands accountability. Accountability has to be the rule of the day for the Chicago Police Department, and that has to happen regardless of who is chosen as superintendent.” Lightfoot and the other members noted all its candidates—two African-American men and a white woman—had handled police misconduct and police shooting incidents and were best equipped to rebuild the community’s trust in the police department and fight crime.
It was an impressive bunch.
Eugene Williams, a deputy chief with the Chicago Police Department, was a 36-year department veteran and had been a finalist for the job in 2011. He commanded the bureau that oversaw training and accountability. Williams had worked his way up through the ranks. He had been a homicide detective, a beat officer, a narcotics and gang investigator, and had held various command posts for the past 15 years. He had served as chief of patrol, overseeing beat patrols in the department’s 22 police districts. While he was head of the Austin patrol district on the West Side, the crime-ridden community where Laquan McDonald had lived, the area went six months without a homicide. He was considered a favorite among many African-American ministers in the city. Williams had made it clear that if he got the job, there would be change. He outlined how he had been instrumental in pushing the department’s new accountability measures for dashboard cameras and their audio components. Officers had repeatedly violated these policies for years without consequences, he said, and, in some cases, had intentionally damaged the dashcam video and audio. The McDonald shooting, he said, was an example of the problem: “For this lack of integrity, we have never seriously disciplined any department member. As a result, we have not had video and audio in several of the high-profile police-involved shootings or other allegations of misconduct.”
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