The deadly Chicago police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald lasted only a few seconds but the fallout from the grim images, caught on a police dashboard camera, continues to this day.
Since the city released the video on Nov. 24, 2015, it has been viewed by millions, but one person has refused to watch it.
“I don’t think, to this day, that she has watched the video,” said Michael Robbins, one of the attorneys who represented McDonald’s mother, Tina Hunter. “And then of course it became wallpaper, if you will, on the 24-hour news cycle and it went on and on and it’s everywhere. And it drove home her loss.”
Hunter never wanted the video to go public, Robbins said, but she knew it was a possibility.
Attorney Jeffrey Neslund, who also represented Hunter, said the video’s release tortured her.
“You don’t know when it’s going to pop up on the news or in the newspaper, and this is her son,” Neslund said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration also didn’t want it to come out, but for different reasons. Officials argued making the video public would compromise investigations into the shooting. But a Cook County judge disagreed and ordered for the video to be released.
And a chain reaction took place after the video was made public. WBEZ presents this timeline of events following the McDonald shooting, from the resignations of top law - enforcement officials to an overhaul of the city agency tasked with investigating shootings by officers and police misconduct.
Neslund and Robbins say the shooting didn’t immediately stand out. But when they started researching what had been reported in the news they discovered one wrinkle.
“The only discordant note was there was a young woman who was briefly interviewed at the scene, and she said something to the effect that they didn’t have to shoot him,” Robbins says. “It didn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe 10 days after the incident, a whistleblower had reached out, saying what had been reported in the media was far from the reality, that the incident was horrific and that there was dashcam video,” Kalven told WBEZ.
“The moment that the autopsy report was available, I rushed down, got it and immediately opened it in the car and began reading it,” Kalven says. “And there’s a sense in which the corpse testifies (and) tells its own story. I mean, this was, I think, the moment when it’s fair to say that the city’s narrative couldn’t possibly be true.”
Attorneys Michael Robbins, left, and Jeffrey Neslund, counsel for the mother of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, talk to reporters Nov. 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
“When I started the lawsuit, I wasn’t expecting a huge outcry,” Smith tells WBEZ. “I was expecting to get a good story out of it. I was pleasantly surprised, basically. A lot of folks latched on. You know, part of that, I later learned, was kind of a PR push by the law firm that I worked with, so that was useful.”
“It was like my heart stopped, because I couldn’t believe that it was happening and that it was happening on live television,” says Richard Wooten, a retired Chicago police officer, of the video’s release. “But I’m glad it was shown because it brought awareness to changes that needed to be made within our department at this present date and time....
“That was an execution. And it hurt me because it was like, ‘Wow, that could’ve been my son.’ ”
Police Officer Jason Van Dyke is booked into the Cook County Jail. (Cook County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
“We had been reached out to by the mayor’s office to calm the streets or whatever in some meeting in preparation for this tape,” says poet-activist Malcolm London. “We didn’t want to be a part of those people who were telling people to calm down, because we’re not in a calm moment.”
Protesters make their way up North Michigan Avenue on Nov. 27, 2015, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
“I believe, probably, a lot of those officers were stunned at what they were seeing,” says Richard Wooten, a retired Chicago police officer. “And probably what was going through their minds was, ‘Aw man, how do I get away from this?’ A lot of officers, when we see things happening that we know are not right, we immediately try to separate ourselves from that. But unfortunately the situation itself didn’t allow them to actually disassociate themselves because they were already listed as being on the scene.”
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington on Dec. 7, 2015. Lynch announced a federal civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, right, leaves the courtroom after a hearing, with his attorney, Daniel Herbert, at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2015. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune via AP, Pool)
“Laquan McDonald was the most important thing for everybody,” Foxx campaign manager Brian Sleet says about a poll taken after the video’s release. “ The tracker poll we did a couple of weeks before the election ... black voters still cared a lot more, but the white liberal vote, interest had dropped 30-plus percent. What you see working in the neighborhoods is that violence in the South Side and West Side are something that people shake their head about, but it’s not an enduring thing that people are focused on trying to fix.”
Kim Foxx smiles at the crowd as she celebrates her Democratic primary win over incumbent Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez on March 15, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Mayor Rahm Emanuel swears in Eddie Johnson as the new police superintendent at a City Council meeting April 13, 2016. Johnson, who has 27 years on the force, was Emanuel’s hand-picked choice to take the job. The City Council confirmed the appointment in a 50-0 vote. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
In this frame grab from a body cam provided by the Independent Police Review Authority, a Chicago police officer fires into a stolen car driven by Paul O’Neal on July 28, 2016. (Chicago Police Department/Independent Police Review Authority via AP)
Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivers a plan to combat the city’s gun violence at Malcolm X Community College on Sept. 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
