The city of Chicago is bracing for possible riots once a horrific video of the savage killing of 17-year old teenager Laquan McDonald who was shot 16 times by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. Sources are revealing that the video will show that the cop in question fired 3 fatal shots inside of the teen because he was walking away holding a knife in his hand and then once the teen was laying face down on the ground, the cop walked over to him and fired an additional 13 shots.
The shooting occurred last October and the cop has been on paid desk duty ever since. What changed since the shooting was the fact that a freelance journalist requested that the Chicago Police Department release the dash cam footage pursuant to a statutory opens record request, which was eventually denied by the police department. The journalist along with his attorney filed a lawsuit and last Friday, a Chicago judge ruled that the video must be released.
“The fact is, this gentleman did have a knife in his hand,” said Harry Houck, a CNN contributor and former New York City police detective. “This could come down to experience, I don’t know. The fact is that apparently they followed this man for almost half a mile with a knife.”
“New Day” host Michaela Pereira reminded the contributor that McDonald was a teenager, not an adult.
“A teenager would kill me just as dead as a 30-year-old,” Houck said. “He had a knife in his hand and he was under the influence of PCP, which is a psychotic drug that makes you go crazy.”
He said officers should have feared that McDonald might encounter and then violently attack a random civilian, and Houck disagreed that police could have set up a perimeter around the teen and then arrest him.
Hill said Van Dyke inaccurately claimed after the shooting that McDonald was approaching him with a knife, although those who have seen the dashboard camera video say it shows the officer repeatedly shoot the teen as he lay face-down on the ground.
“That raises serious questions about the veracity of his claims,” Hill said.
Houck said officers must act quickly to eliminate potential threats.
“I don’t know if, all of a sudden, I’m sitting there playing stupid, silly games, this guy comes this way here, and he kills an officer — when I could have shot him five minutes ago,” Houck said.
Houck said the officers were trying to contain McDonald when one of them opened fire, but he said Van Dyke was likely justified because the teen could have cut them with the four-inch knife he was carrying — even from 10 to 15 feet away.
“Ten to 15 feet — wow,” Hill said.
One would have to be completely naive to believe that a murder caught on camera takes an entire year to investigate whether or not the killing was justified. In addition, why is the cop still collecting a paycheck unless there was never any intention on bringing charges against him. Sources from the Chicago’s prosecutor’s office are now saying that the officer in fact will be indicted for 1st degree murder. Is this all propaganda or damage control? Whatever the case, civil unrest in the City of Chicago is a high possibility.
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