CHICAGO — Chicago officials released a chilling dashcam video of the fatal shooting of a black 17-year-old on Tuesday, just hours after a white police officer was charged with first-degree murder in the encounter.
The video was released during a late afternoon news conference, fulfilling a judge's order that it be made public.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged that the video would make some residents angry, but said it was a time for healing. "It is now the time to come together as one city, show respect for one another," Emanuel said.
Earlier Tuesday, Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state's attorney, charged the officer, Jason Van Dyke, in the death of the teenager, Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.
Van Dyke fired all 16 shots, while other officers did not fire at all, a county prosecutor, William G. Delaney, said at a hearing on Tuesday. Van Dyke started shooting less than 30 seconds after arriving at the scene, the prosecutor said, and he fired for 14 or 15 seconds. For 13 of those seconds, Delaney said, McDonald was already on the ground. Witnesses said McDonald, who was carrying a folding knife, never spoke to Van Dyke nor did he do anything threatening toward him.
Wearing a sweater and jeans, Van Dyke, who was taken off the Police Department's payroll on Tuesday, stood quietly in a courtroom here as a prosecutor described the shooting. The judge, Donald Panarese Jr., ordered Van Dyke held without bail, indicating that he wanted to see the video before revisiting the question of bond at a hearing scheduled for Monday.
The charges against Van Dyke seemed likely to blunt reaction to the release of the video. Still, Chicago police prepared for a tense night as the family of McDonald and local officials called for calm. "No one understands the anger more than us, but if you choose to speak out, we urge you to be peaceful," the family, which opposed the release of the video, said in a statement.
Alvarez spoke of public safety as she announced the murder charges, the first such charges against a Chicago officer connected to an on-duty incident in recent memory. "I made a decision to come forward first because I felt like, with the release of this video, that it's really important for public safety that the citizens of Chicago know that this officer is being held accountable for his actions," Alvarez said.
Dan Herbert, a lawyer for Van Dyke, has said the officer, a 14-year police veteran, believed the shooting was justified because he feared for his safety. Herbert said his client intended to go to trial.
Chicago's police force has its own sometimes painful history, which by some estimates includes more than $500 million in settlements and other costs over the last decade tied to police misconduct as well as reparations for black residents who said a group of officers abused and tortured them in the 1970s and 1980s.
In April, the city agreed to pay $5 million to the McDonald family, even before a suit had formally been filed in the case.
For months, the city had refused to release the video. On Thursday, city officials reversed course after Franklin Valderrama, a Cook County judge, ordered it released. Announcing that the city would not appeal the case after being expected to, Emanuel strongly condemned the officer's actions. Van Dyke "took the law into his own hands," the mayor said after charges were filed, "and now it's up to the justice system to hold him accountable."
Alvarez, who like Emanuel is a Democrat, is in her second term as the top prosecutor in the county that includes Chicago, the nation's third-largest city. She is seeking re-election next year, and faces opposition in a Democratic primary in March.
Van Dyke has worked as a Chicago police officer since June 2001, records show. He was put on administrative duty pending the investigation, a spokesman for the Police Department said. Since at least April, the shooting has been investigated by a team that includes the FBI, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago and the Cook County state's attorney's office. Legal experts said federal charges were also possible.
Herbert, the lawyer for Van Dyke, said he was a highly decorated officer. But records show that he had been the subject of numerous complaints from residents, including allegations of using excessive force and making racial slurs.
In 2013, a Hispanic man accused Van Dyke and another officer of striking him during a traffic stop and laughing at him because he had hearing and speech impairments, claims that both officers denied. In 2011, a black man claimed that Van Dyke had choked him and twisted his arm during a drunken-driving arrest, which the officer denied. The Independent Police Review Authority found that neither allegation had merit.
Herbert said that no merit had ever been found by the authorities in any of the allegations against Van Dyke.
The Chicago police are frequently involved in shootings, including 15 from July to September this year. But officers here rarely face charges for firing their weapons.
Dante Servin, a detective, is perhaps the most notable exception in recent memory. Servin was charged with involuntary manslaughter for a 2012 off-duty episode that resulted in the death of Rekia Boyd, an unarmed black woman. A judge acquitted Servin this year.
Another officer, John Gorman, was charged this month with aggravated discharge of a firearm while off duty. Prosecutors accused Gorman of being under the influence of alcohol when he fired shots at two men, including an off-duty suburban officer, who tried to intervene when Gorman was seen driving erratically.
In Van Dyke's case, the police were summoned to the city's southwest side one night in October 2014 in response to a report of a man with a knife trying to break into vehicles in a trucking yard. McDonald, who was holding a folding knife, refused to drop it when officers told him to, the authorities have said, and he began walking or jogging away. Officers began following him, and one called for backup from any nearby police unit with a stun gun.
At one point, McDonald, whose autopsy showed the presence of the drug PCP in his system, pounded on the windshield of the squad car and punctured its front tire with the knife, city officials say. When the group of at least six officers and McDonald got to a busy stretch of Pulaski Road, a multilane commercial stretch, the police dashboard camera captured the final moments of the encounter.
Officials said McDonald was a ward of the state at the time of his death, and was attending an alternative school, Sullivan House High School. "He was coming every day, joking and even giving hugs," Thomas Gattuso, the principal, said in an interview.
Michael D. Robbins, a lawyer for McDonald's family, said he had been raised, in large part, by a grandmother, who died in 2013. McDonald's mother had been working to regain custody before his death, Robbins said.
His mother has not been able to bring herself to watch the video, he said, and was "hunkering down" at the prospect of its release.
"She is very, very distraught," Robbins said Monday evening. "It's a reminder about the loss of her son — and it's going to come as this big, glaring, publicly displayed event. She is very emotional."