13 months after Laquan McDonald was killed by Officer Jason Van Dyke in Chicago, the dashcam video of the incident has finally been released. The 17 year-old was walking down the street with a knife in hand and refusing officers' orders. Then Van Dyke arrived. In the video, he draws his gun and suddenly Laquan is down. Just looking at the video, I didn't understand the issue. You run around with a knife and refuse to drop it when ordered by police, you should expect to get shot. No, what bothered me is how he was just left to bleed. It wasn't until I read the story that I learned that Van Dyke had emptied his 16 round clip! Laquan was riddled with 14 bullets, the vast majority of them after he was already lying on the street. Van Dyke has been charged with first-degree murder for the incident.
As it happens, Mayor Rahm Emanuel - former Chief of Staff for President Obama - was coincidentally running for reelection as mayor. Had the dashcam video been released prior to the February election or the April run-off election, Emanuel would have had a much more difficult path to reelection. Where he had black pastors working to get him the black vote, he might instead have seen Black Lives Matter protestors at his every campaign event.
The big problem here is the mishandling from the beginning. If the video had been revealed to the public immediately and the murder charge had been levied in November of 2014, it could have been a political asset, a demonstration that the mayor was intolerant of police malfeasance. Instead, the year long delay makes one wonder what else the mayor is keeping under wraps. However, there is also the possibility that, even correctly handled, there might have been massive demonstrations that would have hurt Emanuel. I suspect that is what he feared and why it took so long to come to light.
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