No thread on this yet? I saw this news report on the shooting of Laquan McDonald and, holy crap! The guy is probably high, but he’s just walking down the street obliviously. It doesn’t look like he even knew the police were there. It’s undebatably an unjustified shooting.
But what really stinks is that the prosecutors apparently sat on this video for a whole year, and lied about it by saying McDonald lunged at the officers. Is anybody going to prosecute them?
It’s been/being discussed in the BBQ Pit omnibus thread on police brutality, but I don’t think it has its own thread. Two updates today: Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was fired today, so that’s the latest update. FBI also investigated the Burger King video that has around 90 minutes missing from it, from the time surrounding the shooting, and the result was that they did not find any evidence of police tampering. (Police investigators spent two hours looking at BK’s surveillance video after the shooting.)
I’ll try to find the cite but I read was that the video system was a piece of crap and had many periods in which it didn’t work. It doesn’t take 2 hours to delete a video. It could easily take two hours to figure out how to get video off a shitty system that is barley working or not working at all. It appears that the area covered did not include the shooting but would have shown McDonald walking around. You always want as much evidence as you can but it doesn’t appear much if anything was lost. Everything that matters was in the video available. It is not disputed that McDonald was high, not listening to commands and that he was holding a knife. Whether that justified the shooting is up to the jury.
ETA: Here is an article that covers most of the Burger King video issue.
Yeah, barring other evidence, I’m inclined to believe the FBI here for this particular issue. I live by this Burger King and I doubt much would have been seen from the surveillance. The reports were he was shot less than 100 yards from the BK, which is factually correct. But it’s really is more like around 30-40 yards from the closest corner of the Burger King (the drive-thru window). I don’t think a wide-angle security camera would have picked up much of the shooting itself, but I don’t know where the cameras are stationed. I supposed I can go and look. If they are by the parking lot, that’s more like 60-70 yards, but I don’t see any reason why they’d be facing where McDonald was shot. (If there is a camera situated by the exit of the drive thru, though, that would see something, although, once again, with a typical wide angle, I don’t think much could be seen.) That said, I have other opinions about the situation via what was seen from the dashcam video.
He wasn’t just walking down the street. He was a knife wielding teen high on PCP, suspected of vandalism.
The police officer has been charged and is out on bail while awaiting trial.
His mother will be paid a settlement of 5 million dollars even though she didn’t raise him. He was removed from her care due to suspected abuse.
Am I the only one disturbed by the fact that some named *McDonald *was killed near a Burger King?
This is a non issue. Every Monday morning the Chicago Tribune throws up a headline of how any people were killed over the weekend.
Here are some numbers for Chicago in 2014.
Shot & Killed: 390
Shot & Wounded: 2229 (!!! No Shit?)
Total Shot: 2619
Total Homicides: 460
Englewood is the goto neighborhood. Source is here. Read it and weep.
The police officer wasn’t charged for more than a year, right? And the settlement was ordered months ago, well before the cop was charged or even removed from duty.
Word on the street is that Rahm convinced prosecutors to sit on the dashcam tape until after his re-election this past Spring. Now he can safely ride it out until it is forgotten about before the next election.
Glad to see where you stand on the police murdering citizens issue.
Correction. The source is here. A person was shot every 3 minutes 19 seconds. Where is Father Pfleger and Jesse Jackson?
A trigger-happy cop and a drug-addled criminal are both off the street. I have a hard time feeling too bad about it.
Sorry DigitalC. I keep thinking of a relative when this kind of issue surfaces. With profound regret, I apologize if I offended you sensibilities.
I am going to nip this right here. If you want to discuss factual information about the case do so here. If anyone wants to start sniping at other posters for their views or to start to rant there is already a discussion going on in The Pit. This is MPSIMS. It is not The Pit. It is not Great Debates. MPSIMS is not Pit-Lite.
I happened to pick these to posts but it should go without saying that I am speaking to anyone who is going to post in this thread.
Understood, thanks.
Updating this thread after three years a Cook County jury has started deliberations: they spent 5 hours on it Thursday and are continuing today.
Here are 6 takeaways from closing arguments:
Verdict is in, going to be announced in about 10 minutes.
Guilty of murder.
ETA: (Second degree)
Man, that’s good news.
Not sure how high profile this police shooting has been outside of Chicago, but it has been HUGE around here. The officer has just been convicted of 2d degree murder and faces a minimum of 6 yrs.
I think that is a pretty reasonable outcome. As reprehensible as the officer’s conduct, I feared 1st degree might be an overreach. Hope this verdict does not result in violence.
Thoughts?
Apologies if this is not the correct forum. I searched, and did not readily see another thread.