Above Photo: From PopularResistance.org.
Note: You can see the key videos here.
Newly released videos from four other police cars offer new perspective on the moments before and after the 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with first-degree murder. Until Wednesday, city officials had released only one video of the events; the new videos raise questions about how police documented the shooting. Here are excerpts from three of the videos.
From vehicle Officer Van Dyke was riding in
This excerpt is from previously unreleased dashboard-camera video of the police vehicle in which Officer Jason Van Dyke was a passenger. The nine-minute video is out of focus from start to finish. No conversations or radio chatter can be heard on it, but the sound of the vehicle’s siren can be heard in the background throughout the footage. In the seconds before the shooting it depicts the police cruiser approaching a nearby Burger King and captures an image of Laquan McDonald cutting in front of the vehicle and then running across the front of the restaurant onto Pulaski Road. The vehicle pursues him over a curb and pulls past him. As the vehicle Van Dyke is in comes to a stop, its camera captures another police SUV pulling up to the scene, directly facing and very close to the spot where Van Dyke will shoot and kill McDonald seconds later. The city of Chicago has not released any video from that vehicle or said whether any exists.
Video released to the public
This excerpt is from the same video the city released online to the public Nov. 24, capturing the most complete version of the shooting that has been made public. This version, provided to the Tribune on a DVD, includes the faint sound of the vehicle’s siren in the more than five minutes it took to arrive at the scene. Authorities have said there is no audio with the video.
In the seconds leading up to the shooting, the video shows a brief glimpse of Laquan McDonald running in front of a nearby Burger King on Pulaski Road with another police vehicle in pursuit. In the passenger seat of that second vehicle is Officer Jason Van Dyke. The video then shows McDonald running down the center of Pulaski and then veering to his right across an entire lane as the vehicle containing Van Dyke slows, with the officer opening his door before it comes to a full stop. Van Dyke and the police officer driving that vehicle jump out with their guns drawn. The vehicle from which the video was shot turns slightly to its right so that only McDonald is in the frame as bullets hit him and he twists to the ground.
From car that arrived just after shooting
This excerpt is from a dash cam of a police vehicle that arrives on the scene just seconds after the shooting. The camera shows Laquan McDonald appear to move slightly on the pavement as officers mill about just feet away. It shows that there were at least four other police vehicles at the scene in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and the city has released video from the dash cams of only two of those.