The public release of Chicago police video capturing an officer fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on a South Side street was not just the story of the year, but a pivotal moment in the city’s history, experts say.
“This is a watershed event,” said Arthur Lurigio, psychology and criminal justice professor at Loyola University Chicago. “The video is the focal point for bringing to public light in an unprecedented way the ongoing concerns between mostly African-American communities and the Chicago Police Department,” Lurigio said, adding: “This is an opportunity for us to view the problems systemically and collectively.”
The video, released just before Thanksgiving despite Mayor Emanuel pushing to keep it under wraps, contradicts claims laid out in police reports by Officer Jason Van Dyke—the officer who fired the 16 shots at McDonald—and at least five other officers that McDonald moved or turned threateningly toward officers. The video of the October 2014 shooting shows McDonald walking away.
Peaceful protests were swiftly organized, with crowds marching for justice, taking the demonstration to Michigan Avenue during Black Friday shopping and continuing days later, with calls for Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign.
The mayor said he has no plans to resign after having won the election in a runoff in April. Alvarez faces a March primary election.
Dick Simpson, political science professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and former Chicago alderman, expects Emanuel to continue on as mayor but said it’s too soon to tell whether the video will have an effect on the 2019 mayoral race or bring together coalition of progressives—similar to what happened in Chicago politics in the 1970s when the issue of police brutality came to a boil.
The issue of police abuse led to a political revolt by the U.S. Rep. Ralph Metcalfe, a one-time South Side alderman, who split from Chicago’s Democratic political machine and helped spur a coalition of African-Americans, Latinos and whites whose muscle would lead to the election of Harold Washington and the progressive regime in the 1980s, Simpson said.
“This is probably a larger outpouring of demonstrations and has had a more immediate effect,” Simpson said of the McDonald case.
The fallout so far has included the ouster of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, the resignation of the head of the Independent Police Review Authority and a public apology from Emanuel.
Simpson expects the McDonald case to have long-term effects. He predicted the U.S. Justice Department, which will conduct a review of the police department and its use of deadly force, to revise police procedures, issue a consent decree requiring reforms and order a monitor to oversee compliance.
“I expect particularly the whole process of supervision of police will be totally revamped,” Simpson said.
While this was the top story of the year in Chicago, there were plenty of others that captured our attention. Click on the photo above to take a closer look at the 7 biggest stories this year in Chicago.
The Chicago Tribune contributed.
