Initially, Laquan McDonald’s death was hardly a blip on the radar screen of the Chicago Police Department and most residents of the city. And why would it be? Chicago’s police department had been synonymous with racism, brutality, and corruption for so long that few current residents can remember when there wasn’t a police scandal. By the late 1950s, police officers’ practice of collecting bribes from motorists and pedestrians, and “presents” and other “gifts” from retail merchants around Christmas, had gone on so long that Chicago residents had come to expect this from their officers. A friend told me that when he attended Northwestern University in the late 1960s, everyone knew, if you were driving into the city, to wrap a $20 bill, bribe money, around your driver’s license in case a Chicago cop stopped you.
Still, Chicagoans were surprised to learn in 1960 that several of their officers were helping a professional burglar sneak into and rob homes of wealthy North Side residents during what became known as the Summerdale Scandal. The eight officers acted as lookouts for burglar Richard Morrison during the break-ins and helped haul away the loot in their squad cars. Ironically, it was the cops’ idea to forge the partnership. Morrison said that when they approached him with the proposition, they told him, “We like nice things, too.”
Those offenses were minuscule affairs compared to the crimes Chicago cop Jon Burge and others committed, starting 12 years later. From 1972 to 1991, Burge, a Chicago police detective, and other officers whose help he enlisted, tortured hundreds of African-American and Latino men accused of crimes until they gave false confessions. Scores of his victims went to prison, including at least four men who were sentenced to death. Burge and the officers used vicious beatings, Russian roulette, and other violent methods. They burned suspects with radiators and cigarettes and shocked their testicles with electric cattle prods to coerce confessions. When the extent of their crimes began to be revealed years later, then–Illinois Governor George Ryan in 2000 declared a moratorium on all executions in the state, because it was unclear whether many of the black men on death row were there because they were guilty or because Chicago police had tortured them into giving false confessions. Ryan later pardoned four of Burge’s victims on death row and commuted the sentences of 167 inmates slated to be executed.
Burge and his men acted with impunity. City officials, police, and prosecutors all knew by the mid-1970s of Burge’s torture tactics, but they were allowed to continue until he was fired in 1993. Ironically, Burge was never tried in court for torture because the statute of limitations had expired. Instead, he was convicted in 2010 on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury in relation to testimony in a 1989 civil suit against him for damages for alleged torture. He was sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison on January 21, 2011, and was out in October of that year.
The case of Andrew Wilson is just one example of what happened during Burge’s reign of terror. In 1982, Wilson was arrested on a February morning for the murder of two police officers. At the end of the day, he was taken by police and admitted to Mercy Hospital and Medical Center with lacerations on various parts of his head, including his face, chest bruises, and thigh burns. More than a dozen injuries were documented as having been caused while Wilson was in police custody. A doctor who saw Wilson sent a memo to Richard M. Daley, then the prosecuting attorney for Chicago and surrounding Cook County. He asked Daley’s office to investigate what he saw as a clear case of police brutality.
“I examined Mr. Andrew Wilson on Feb. 15 & 16, 1982,” the doctor wrote. “He had multiple bruises, swellings and abrasions on his face and head. His right eye was battered and had a superficial laceration. Andrew Wilson had several linear blisters on his right thigh, right cheek and anterior chest which were consistent with radiator burns. He stated he’d been cuffed to a radiator and pushed into it. He also stated that electrical shocks had been administered to his gums, lips and genitals. All these injuries occurred prior to his arrival at the jail. There must be a thorough investigation of this alleged brutality.”
Daley, son of the former longtime mayor Richard J. Daley, would be elected the 43rd and longest-serving mayor in Chicago’s history; he ignored the doctor’s report. Instead, Daley’s prosecutors convicted Wilson and his brother, Jackie, of the murders, and Andrew Wilson was sentenced to death. In 1987, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the convictions, ruling that Wilson was forced to confess involuntarily after being beaten by police. An internal police report that had been suppressed for years revealed an earlier police review that found criminal suspects were subjected to systematic brutality by Burge and his men at headquarters for 12 years, and that their commanders had knowledge of the abuses.
Scores of people came forward to tell of their torture at the hands of Burge and other police officers. Gregory Banks filed a civil suit in 1991 for $16 million in damages against Burge, three other cops, and the city of Chicago. He said he had falsely confessed to murder in 1983 after he was tortured by officers who placed a plastic bag over his head and put a gun in his mouth. While he was being tortured, he said, he saw 11 other men being beaten, burned, and getting electric shocks. Marcus Wiggins filed a lawsuit against Burge and the city, alleging that, when he was 13, he had been subjected to electric shock and forced to give a false confession. Another lawsuit described 23 incidents against black and Latino suspects between 1972 and 1985, and more than 150 Illinois state prisoners filed suit against the city, saying Burge had tortured them as well into making false confessions.
Legal wrangling and fallout from the Burge scandal continued until 2015. Ultimately, the city paid more than $57 million to his victims and spent another $50 million on defense of the officers.
Through the years, cases of police corruption continued unabated. In 1996, seven officers from the Austin District on Chicago’s West Side were charged with shaking down drug dealers for cash and narcotics. A year later, three cops in the Auburn Gresham District were charged with similar offenses, and the police superintendent resigned after it was discovered that, in violation of department rules, he was buddies with a convicted felon.
In a case that would lay bare the city’s underlying bias, police charged two African-American boys, ages 7 and 8, with the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, Ryan Harris. It was 1998. Police claimed the boys had confessed to striking her with a rock, then raping her with a tubular object and suffocating her with her underwear by stuffing it in her mouth. The boys, and, by extension, their parents and Chicago’s mostly black South Side communities were vilified by prosecutors, police, and politicians as “depraved” and “monsters.” A month after their arrest, however, police found semen on the girl’s underwear. They couldn’t have done it. Boys aged 7 and 8 don’t produce semen. The real murderer was a man named Floyd Durr, a sexual predator who had preyed on girls and teenagers in the area. He pleaded guilty and received a life sentence, plus 30 years. Prosecutors said his IQ was so low he was not eligible for the death penalty.
The following year, an unarmed black man and an unarmed black woman were shot and killed by police in the same week in separate and suspicious incidents. What was so striking was not the circumstances, but who they were in the community. Robert Russ was an honors student and a star football player for prestigious Northwestern University in nearby Evanston, Illinois. LaTanya Haggerty was a 26-year-old computer analyst. Russ was 22 years old and two weeks from graduation when he was shot. He had been chased by police and his car had come to a stop. He was unarmed inside the vehicle. A Chicago jury awarded Russ’s 4-year-old son $9.6 million after finding that the officer who shot him acted “willfully and wantonly” in causing his death.
Following a high-speed chase of a car in which Haggerty was a passenger, she was shot by a female officer who said she saw an object in the car that appeared to be a gun. There was no gun. According to the department’s investigation, the officers ignored a sergeant’s order to end the high-speed chase. The officers failed to get immediate medical help for Haggerty after she was shot. Three officers fired their guns without justification, the department said, and three officers gave false information to investigators about the incident. Haggerty’s family was awarded $18 million.
The number of cases of corruption and malfeasance against Chicago’s cops picked up in 2001. In April of that year, Chicago police officer Joseph Miedzianowski was convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to distribute drugs. He was later sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Miedzianowski used his position as head of the Chicago Gangs Unit for most of his 22 years on the force to organize four different gangs in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and begin trafficking in crack cocaine. He shook down rival drug dealers while using his contacts to provide protection and reveal the identities of undercover police officers to gang members. In all, 24 people were convicted with him, including the leaders of the four street gangs, Miedzianowski’s mistress, and his former police partner.
Six months after Miedzianowski was convicted, Chicago Police Deputy Superintendent William Hanhardt, one of the highest-ranking officers in the police department, pleaded guilty to running a nationwide jewel-theft ring. For over 20 years, he and his gang stole over $5 million in diamonds and other gems. Hanhardt, a member of the department for 33 years, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. Two months later, Chicago Police Sergeant Eddie Hicks was dragged into court and indicted for operating a gang that included another Chicago police sergeant and two civilian members of the police department. They raided known drug houses and took the money and drugs. They kept the cash and resold the drugs to other dealers.
During their capers, Hicks and his accomplices used counterfeit police department badges, phony search warrants, unmarked cars from the police department, and license plates from other police cars. When they finished a heist, they would return to the police station at 51st Street and Wentworth and divvy up the spoils. Hicks was awaiting trial after fleeing and being recaptured in 2017.
In 2007, the Chicago Police Department was engulfed in scandal after a surveillance camera at a local bar recorded drunken, off-duty police officer Anthony Abbate savagely beating female bartender Karolina Obrycka. Obrycka sued Abbate for assault and the city’s police for attempting to cover up the attack. Initially, Chicago police officers ignored the tape’s existence and failed to mention in their police report that Abbate was a city cop. Additionally, Obrycka’s attorney presented evidence, including hundreds of phone calls between Abbate and other cops in the hours after the incident in which they plotted to cover up the attack. Abbate was eventually found guilty of felony battery and lost his job. He was sentenced to two years of probation and anger management classes. In 2012, a federal grand jury sided with Obrycka and said the Chicago Police Department had tried to cover up his crime and awarded her $850,000.
In the most recent case, Cook County prosecutors threw out the convictions of 15 African-American men in November 2017 in the first mass exoneration in the history of Chicago’s courts. The men had been framed on a plethora of phony charges by a group of drug-dealing Chicago cops led by a name infamous in African-American neighborhoods on the city’s South Side, Sergeant Ronald Watts. Convictions of five other people had been thrown out the previous day, bringing to 20 the total number of black men cleared of wrongful convictions. Two of the men had spent more than 27 years in prison for murders they didn’t commit.
For years, Watts had been forcing residents and drug dealers in one South Chicago neighborhood to pay him “protection” money. If they didn’t, he would concoct bogus cases against them and send them to prison. Residents complained to the police department and in court, but judges, prosecutors, and police Internal Affairs investigators all believed the testimony of Watts and his corrupt cops. Watts was finally caught when he tried to rob a federal agent acting as a drug courier. The arrest resulted in a relatively minor charge and Watts, the man who had sent scores of men to prison for hundreds of years on phony charges, was sentenced to a mere 22 months in custody. He was out years before his victims were exonerated. Attorneys estimate there may be as many as 500 convictions tainted by Watts. Ironically, seven of the officers who allegedly framed the men with Watts were still on the department and working the streets on the day the men’s cases were thrown out.
Even with such a long history of police malfeasance and racism, the shooting of Laquan McDonald would ultimately stun even the most hardened Chicago residents. Initially, there was no reason to believe that McDonald’s death wouldn’t be business as usual for the city. Chicago police were known for shooting people. From 2010 to 2014, they shot and killed 70 suspects, more than any other city in the nation. Overall, they shot 242 people during that period, an average of nearly one every week. It seemed unlikely that officers would be charged criminally in the McDonald case, based on the city’s history. Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority, which had been set up in 2007 to provide a firmer hand in resolving police use-of-force cases, had investigated more than 400 police shootings by 2015—fatal and nonfatal shootings. Every shooting except for two was ruled justified, including the shooting of Calvin Cross.
Cross and a friend, Ryan Cornell, were two blocks from Cross’s house in the West Pullman neighborhood in 2011 when a police cruiser slowed nearby. Cross had just returned to Chicago from a Job Corps work assignment in southern Illinois, where he had earned a certificate for bricklaying. He had signed up for the Job Corps program, his mother said, because he had learned that his girlfriend was pregnant with a boy, and he needed a skill to support them. The officers in the cruiser—Mohammed Ali, Macario Chavez, and Matilde Ocampo—were members of the Mobile Strike Force Unit, charged with making gun and drug arrests in high-crime areas.
The officers claimed in their report after the incident that they stopped Cross because they saw him “making movements with his hands and body” that suggested he had a gun. The officers ordered Cross and Cornell to show their hands. Cornell, who had been stopped numerous times by the police, did. Cross started walking faster and then bolted across a field. In their final report, two of the officers said that Cross fired three shots as he broke into a sprint. “I saw him bring the weapon towards us,” one of the officers said later, “and I saw a muzzle light, shooting out at least three times.” That was impossible. Cross didn’t have a gun. A six-cylinder Smith & Wesson revolver was found more than 30 feet away from his dead body, but it was fully loaded. It had not been fired. In fact, it couldn’t have been fired. It was so caked with dirt and grime, an Illinois State Police lab said, that it was inoperable. Additionally, there were no fingerprints on the gun, and Cross had no gunpowder residue on his hands. The only shell casings found at the scene belonged to the police officers.
When Cross ran, Chavez opened fire with the department-issued assault rifle he kept strapped to his chest. Ocampo let loose with his 9mm pistol, as did Ali. When they did, it was clear in that moment that Cross’s black life did not matter.
There was another way to take him into custody without taking his life. He was running away, so he wasn’t a threat. His friend, who knew his family and where he lived, was already in custody. Cross could have been apprehended that night or the next morning. Nor did the officers care about other black lives in the neighborhood as their torrent of gunfire tore into trees and parked cars, and, fortunately, no people.
Cross’s mother heard the shooting from inside her home and wondered what was going on. She had no idea her 19-year-old son was being killed by police. The officers stopped shooting for a moment and found a wounded Cross lying among bushes in a vacant lot. When he moved slightly but failed to show his hands, the police said, Chavez fired three more times with his assault rifle, emptying his clip with shots 26, 27, and 28. Chavez then switched to his 9mm Beretta and fired three more times. Ali also reloaded and fired at Cross as he lay prone. In all, the three officers fired 45 times. The medical examiner reported that the shot that killed Cross struck him in the face, between his nose and his right eye. After examining all the facts in the incident, the Independent Police Review Authority’s investigation concluded that the officers were justified in killing Cross, because “the officers were reasonable in their fear” that Cross “posed a threat.”
There was no reason to believe that what happened in the Cross shooting wouldn’t be repeated in the death of Laquan McDonald. But there was something quirky about the McDonald shooting almost from the start. The official story of the shooting that night, first by the police officers’ union representative and in further official police department reports and explanations, was that Van Dyke fired after McDonald, brandishing his knife, lunged at Van Dyke. The officer then fired in self-defense, police said. According to the official report, Van Dyke told investigators, “[McDonald] was swinging the knife in an aggressive, exaggerated manner.” Van Dyke ordered McDonald to “drop the knife” multiple times. McDonald ignored Van Dyke’s verbal instruction to drop the knife and continued to advance toward Van Dyke. When McDonald got to within 15 feet of Van Dyke, McDonald looked toward Van Dyke. McDonald raised the knife across his chest and over his shoulder, pointing the knife at Van Dyke.
According to the police’s internal investigation report, “Van Dyke believed McDonald was attacking Van Dyke with the knife and attempting to kill Van Dyke. In defense of his life, Van Dyke backpedaled and fired his handgun at McDonald to stop the attack. McDonald fell to the ground, but continued to move and continued to grasp the knife, refusing to let go of it. Van Dyke continued to fire his weapon at McDonald as McDonald was on the ground as McDonald appeared to be attempting to get up, all while continuing to point the knife at Van Dyke. The slide on Van Dyke’s pistol locked in the rearward position, indicating the weapon was empty. Van Dyke performed a tactical reload of his pistol with a new magazine and then assessed the situation. McDonald was no longer moving, and the threat had been mitigated.”
Van Dyke’s partner, Joseph Walsh, repeated the story in his statement to investigators. “When McDonald got to within 12 to 15 feet of the officers,” Walsh said, “he swung the knife toward the officers in an aggressive manner… Van Dyke continued firing his weapon at McDonald. McDonald continued moving on the ground, attempting to get up, while still armed with the knife.” Officer Daphne Sebastian said she “heard the officers repeatedly order McDonald to ‘Drop the knife!’ McDonald ignored the verbal directions and continued to advance on the officers, waving the knife.” Officer Janet Mondragon said, “McDonald got closer and closer to the officers, continuing to wave the knife.” Officer Arturo Becerra said “as he approached the scene of this incident, he observed a black male subject, now known as Laquan McDonald, in the middle of the street, flailing his arms.”
Officer Dora Fontaine said, “McDonald ignored the verbal direction and, instead, raised his right arm toward officer Van Dyke, as if attacking Van Dyke.” Officer Ricardo Viramontes said he “heard Officer Jason Van Dyke repeatedly order McDonald to ‘Drop the knife!’ McDonald ignored the verbal direction and turned toward Van Dyke and his partner, Officer Joseph Walsh. At this time, Van Dyke fired multiple shots from his handgun. McDonald fell to the ground but continued to move, attempting to get back up, with the knife still in his hand. Van Dyke fired his weapon at McDonald continuously, until McDonald was no longer moving.” The officers said that, at most, Van Dyke fired seven or eight shots. The official police statement said McDonald was struck once in the chest.
If all their statements were true, many wondered, why did the city offer McDonald’s mother and his 15-year-old sister $5 million just six months after his death? Yes, a settlement was in line with the city’s normal procedure. Chicago had spent more than $500 million settling wrongful death and police abuse cases filed against the police since 2004, the vast majority of which the department ruled as justified. But city attorneys had taken the unusual step of offering the family money before the family’s attorneys had even filed a lawsuit. And why did the 47-member Chicago City Council, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel presiding, unanimously approve the payment in a mere 36 seconds without a single word of public discussion or debate?
The answer was simple: Because the city council, the police department, and a handful of other city officials knew the real story. They knew how damaging the police officer’s dashcam footage of the event was, showing what had really happened that night. Whether they had seen the video or just been briefed about it, as the mayor said he was before he proffered the settlement, they knew it exposed the previous descriptions of McDonald’s death as egregious lies. So, they remained quiet and rubber-stamped the settlement, and by their silence and approval of hush money to McDonald’s mother and sister, they had become participants in a cover-up to keep the truth hidden from the people of Chicago. Bit by bit, however, the tale police had woven, and city officials had tried to keep from becoming public, began to unravel. Its undoing began a little over two weeks after McDonald’s death.
On November 7, 2014, McDonald’s mother, Tina Hunter, hired attorneys Jeffrey J. Neslund and Michael D. Robbins to investigate her son’s death. Neslund and Robbins were already handling the case of two African-American brothers and their sister who had been wounded by a Chicago cop who fired 11 shots into their back door on New Year’s Day at the beginning of the year. Robbins claimed that Hunter heard about his firm “by word of mouth,” but that is highly unlikely. It’s more probable that someone the attorneys knew sought her out and set up the meeting. Hunter signed an agreement to give the attorneys 40 percent of any settlement or judgment they obtained for her.
Initially, Robbins was skeptical: “I didn’t think there was a case, if he had lunged at a police officer,” the attorney said. Neslund issued subpoenas to the police department for all police videos, reports, and all records and audio dispatches related to the shooting. Once the materials started coming in, Robbins said, “We knew there was something wrong with the official explanation.” First, the attorneys saw the autopsy report. McDonald hadn’t been hit once by the seven or eight shots police on the scene said he fired. Instead, McDonald’s body was riddled with 16 bullets. He had been shot in the left neck, the left chest, the right chest, the back of his left elbow, the back of his right arm, his left wrist, the front of his right hip, the rear of his left shoulder, the rear of his left elbow, his right shoulder, the back of his right arm, the back of his right wrist, the back of his right hand, his right buttocks, the back of his right thigh, and there was a graze wound on the top of his head.
By December, the media began talking to each other of a possible police dashcam video of the shooting. Chicago police officers are required by department regulation to turn on the cameras on their dashboard for such stops. The same month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration knew the shooting could pose a problem. On December 8, Scott Ando, then the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, sent an email to Janey Rountree, deputy chief of staff for public safety, linking to a press release in which two local watchdogs suggested video might contradict the police union’s claims that the officer’s life was in danger. By the beginning of 2015, rumors of what was in the police reports and on the video began to filter out of the police department. Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who studies police accountability, said he was tipped off about the existence of a video from a source inside the department. He said his source told him, “This is really horrific. This looked to at least some people in the department that it may be an execution. That people hadn’t seen anything like this, and that there was a videotape of what occurred—that video of the shooting was caught on police in-car cameras, and that those videos would show the truth. That there was a situation that appeared to be under control, and there wasn’t any immediate risk of human life, and that an officer then just got out of his car and shot Laquan when he was cornered between a construction fence in a pretty deserted area, and then after being on the ground the same officer unloaded his gun multiple times.”
In February 2015, activist and writer Jamie Kalven wrote the first article casting widespread doubt on the police account. Kalven, an author and freelance journalist, had received a copy of McDonald’s autopsy and published an article in the online magazine Slate, confirming that McDonald had been shot 16 times. Meanwhile, Neslund and Robbins continued working behind the scenes to reach a settlement. On March 3, they requested the videos and other police records with a promise to keep the material confidential until the deal was finalized. They were pushing to bring the deal to a close. Based on what they already knew about what had happened, they believed Van Dyke could be indicted at any minute. A criminal case could delay for years any settlement the family might get in the future.
Three days later, Neslund and Robbins sent a letter to the city outlining the reason the city needed to pay McDonald’s family. They made it clear that they now knew what the city and the police were hiding. Aside from the fact that McDonald was shot 16 times, they noted, “This horrific and shocking event was witnessed by a number of civilian witnesses as well as police officers. More importantly, the entire shooting was captured by the dashcam video of a responding unit… Contrary to the false statements the City allowed the [police union] spokesman to spin to the media, the dashcam confirms that Mr. McDonald did not ‘lunge’ toward the police. This case will undoubtedly bring a microscope of national attention to the shooting itself as well as the City’s pattern, practice and procedures in rubber-stamping fatal police shootings of African-Americans as ‘justified.’ This particular shooting can be fairly characterized as a gratuitous execution as well as a hate crime.” The lawyers argued that a public trial “would show a ‘code of silence’ to cover up wrongdoing in the police department. We hereby demand $16,000,000.00 to resolve all claims on behalf of the estate of Laquan McDonald,” they wrote, $1 million for every bullet he took. The lawyers insisted on a response within seven days.
Ten days later, they met with city attorney Thomas Platt and City Hall’s chief lawyer, Stephen Patton. As they negotiated on behalf of McDonald’s mother and sister, Neslund and Robbins compared settlements in other police shootings, including the 2011 shooting of Flint Farmer, part of which was caught on video. Flint Farmer, 29, was unarmed when he was shot and killed by then-Officer Gildardo Sierra in June 2011. It was Sierra’s second fatal shooting and third shooting. Sierra fired at Farmer 16 times, hitting him with seven shots, three of them in his back. Despite video suggesting that Sierra stood over Farmer as he shot him in the back, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez declined to charge Sierra criminally. She said the officer reasonably mistook a cell phone for a gun pointed at him on a dark South Side street. Even though Alvarez’s office never bothered to question Sierra about the incident, she said she did not think her office could show that the shooting was unreasonable. Alvarez was still the state’s attorney when McDonald was shot, and by now she had seen the video of the McDonald shooting, but had not brought charges. Farmer’s family filed suit against the city and was awarded more than $4 million.
Neslund and Robbins also discussed the shooting of Rekia Boyd. Boyd, 22, was in an alley laughing and having fun with friends when Officer Dante Servin came out to complain about the noise. Servin, who was off duty, got into a heated argument with one of the men in the alley, pulled his weapon, and fired five shots into the crowd. He claimed he thought someone had pulled a gun. No one in the group was armed. Boyd was hit in the head and killed. Servin was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter by Cook County Judge Dennis Porter in a bench trial. Boyd’s family was awarded more than $4 million in a subsequent settlement.
The meeting ended and in a follow-up letter a few days later, Neslund and Robbins noted, “None of the cases discussed involve a graphic video which depicts, in vivid detail, a 17-year-old being shot multiple times as he lay helpless on the street.”
In a letter to Platt dated March 23, 2015, Robbins reprimands city officials for sharing with the police department information in their letters and then goes on to say they have found that police falsified citizens’ accounts of the shooting. “One witness whom the police reports alleged did not see the shooting in fact told multiple police officers that he saw the shooting, and it was ‘like an execution,’” the attorney said. “Civilian witnesses have told us that they were held against their will for hours, intensively questioned by detectives, during which they were repeatedly pressured by police to change their statements. When the witnesses refused to do so, the investigating officers simply fabricated civilian accounts in the reports.” Robbins wrote that if the city won’t settle soon, he and Neslund will sue.
By April, the parties were close to an agreement. They swapped settlement proposals and Robbins objected to the city’s requirement that the dashcam video be kept secret until criminal charges were concluded, if they were ever filed. The pace of the agreement quickened as Platt agreed to drop a section that said releasing records could interfere with the criminal investigation, but Robbins and Neslund, on a gentlemen’s agreement, had no intention of releasing the video. On April 8, the city and McDonald’s mother agreed on $5 million. Five days later, as the mayor’s chief attorney, Patton urged the Chicago City Council Finance Committee to approve the deal. “Attorneys for the estate will argue that Mr. McDonald did not pose any immediate threat of death or great bodily harm to Officer A and that instead McDonald, as I mentioned before, was walking away from police when he was shot, and they will argue that the videotape supports their version of events,” he said. “This is kind of a unique case where we had the original two officers who arrived at the scene follow Mr. McDonald for some number of blocks and manner of minutes and never saw fit to discharge their weapons.”
Two days later, the full City Council approved the agreement 47–0. McDonald’s mother, Tina Hunter, was to receive 45 percent of the money, $2.25 million, in monthly payments for 20 years. Her attorneys were to receive 40 percent of her share, $900,000. McDonald’s sister was to get 55 percent of the settlement, $2.75 million, in monthly payments until 2060. Neslund and Robbins received a third of her share, $916,667. The nature of the McDonald settlement, the rumors about the shooting, and just plain sense signaled the media and anyone who had been paying attention that a police dashcam video existed of McDonald’s death. The media, activists, and community leaders, particularly those in African-American communities, clamored for its release. The city’s corporation counsel, Stephen Patton, refused. Instead, he promised to release the potentially incendiary video at the “appropriate time,” but not while an “active federal and state criminal investigation” was ongoing.
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.