Nothing can undo the murder of Laquan McDonald. On Oct. 20, 2014, Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke—only thirty seconds after arriving on the scene as back-up—pumped all 16 of the rounds his 9mm firearm held into the 17-year-old’s body. Of the eight officers there, Van Dyke was the only one who believed it necessary to use his gun. According to the document charging him with murder:
None of the officers observed McDonald attempt to throw his knife at defendant (Van Dyke), jump or lunge toward Van Dyke, raise his knife as if to stab defendant, or did anything that was obviously threatening toward defendant beyond what was depicted in the video and not responding to commands while carrying a knife.
As for the aforementioned video, there might not have been a trial without it. The city spent a year suppressing it, and only released it after activists and protesters brought significant pressure, and after the city was ordered to do so by a court. About a week ago, that trial resulted in the conviction of Officer Van Dyke on 16 counts of aggravated battery—one for each shot—and one count of second-degree murder. The jury that convicted him consisted of only one black juror, along with seven whites, three Latinos, and one Asian juror. They could have also found him guilty of first-degree murder, but that would have required them to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Van Dyke knew he was breaking the law when he committed the murder, and the jury wasn’t willing to go that far.
When the verdict was about to come down, the city braced for another injustice. It had been more than half a century since a Chicago police officer had been convicted of murder for killing someone while on duty. That record came to an end with the verdict against Van Dyke.
Officer Van Dyke had a long history of questionable behavior, with 20 complaints about his conduct as an officer filed against him by Chicago residents, according to a database compiled by the Citizens Police Data Project—which covers most, but not all of the past 16 years. None of those complaints resulted in any disciplinary action being taken against Van Dyke. For context, the Chicago PD employs approximately 12,000 officers, but only 402 of them had as many as 20 complaints filed against them, according to this database.
The culture of policing in Chicago is a far bigger problem than Jason Van Dyke, and it needs to be reformed from top to bottom. Just listen to what sociology professor Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve saw and learned thanks to her bird’s eye-view:
Beginning in 1998, when I was a law clerk in the Chicago prosecutor’s office and studying the criminal court system for my Ph.D. in sociology, I had a front-row seat to the culture that created Van Dyke, a culture that reached all the way into the court system. I heard police officers walk into the courthouse using racial slurs, call black men “dogs,” mock defendants in bastardized Ebonics, and bully judges and prosecutors who questioned their framing of cases and events on the street.
Police would make cases more convincing by, as they put it, “shading” or “fudging” details to shape reports and testimony. They might, for example, change the weight or height of an offender to better fit a description. But they were often even bolder in pursuit of conviction. Sometimes there was a dead suspect and the story behind the death did not make sense. Prosecutors would step out of the room so police partners could “refresh their memories”; that was code for getting their version of the story straight.
[snip] Judges who questioned the veracity of police testimony or reports were considered disrespectful traitors and were treated as such. Once, in a courtroom with a judge who was said to scrutinize drug cases too closely, two officers leaned over to me and called the judge a “fucking liberal” who “flushed” their work “down the toilet with the crap.”
Regarding Laquan McDonald’s murder, it is not enough to send the man who pulled the trigger to jail. The culture of the Chicago PD is reflected in the attempt by Officer Van Dyke’s fellow cops to cover up that murder by lying about what happened that night—lies that were exposed once the video finally emerged.
Three officers—all of whom had two decades or more of experience on the force—now face state felony charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and official misconduct. The maximum sentence that awaits them, if they are convicted, is more than a decade in prison. The most senior of the three, Officer David March, was the one assigned to initially investigate the shooting of Laquan McDonald, and he determined that it was “justified.” Activists had the following to say about this attempt to punish those cops who perpetrated a “code of silence” in this case:
“This has been the routine of the Chicago Police Department,” said William Calloway, an activist who pressed for the release of the McDonald video in 2015 as city officials resisted. “We have to make an example of these officers.”
[snip] “They are just as guilty as Jason Van Dyke, if not worse,” said the Rev. Ira Acree, a West Side minister and an outspoken critic of the Police Department. “Because they wanted to cover up a crime and they took an oath to protect and serve.”
Mr. Calloway and fellow members of the community fighting for change have already achieved a great deal. Another front-line activist is Kina Collins, who founded the Chicago Neighborhood Alliance. Collins explained that protestors, outraged by seeing the video of McDonald’s murder, demanded three concrete changes—and they weren’t minor ones. They wanted to see the removal of the chief of police, the state’s attorney for Cook County, and the mayor. The first was fired in December 2015 by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a week after the video finally was released. Voters defeated the second one at the ballot box in 2016, and, as for Emanuel, he recently announced he won’t seek re-election. That’s three for three. But Collins and her fellow activists are not finished by a long shot, as she explained:
With so much to be proud of accomplishing, the large elephant in the room is how we plan to hold the rest of the system accountable. And the facts remain that City Council has failed us.
The problem of excessive police violence is far from solved, either in Chicago or nationwide. However, the conviction of Officer Van Dyke, along with other positive developments there, are giving people hope. Here’s the aforementioned William Calloway, speaking just after Van Dyke’s verdict was announced:
We pray and we hope that this gives some inspiration and encouragement not only to the City of Chicago but all cities across America, to let them know that excessive force and unlawful and unjustified and unreasonable use of force by police officers will not be tolerated.
Looking at this issue beyond Chicago, a huge reaction from activists, along with Tamir Rice’s mother, Samaria Rice, ensured that the cop who killed him won’t be hired by another Ohio police department. That such a hire was even being considered shows how persistent the forces of reaction are. But the outcome also shows that they can be overcome.
Although I’m not speaking from personal experience, I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that few African Americans—outside of Kanye West, perhaps—would say that 2018 has been a great year for the black members of our American community. At the national level, we continue to have more of the same vile, race-baiting rhetoric coming from the White House. There’s no reason to think that will change as long as Mr. 46 Percent of the Popular Vote continues to reside there, given his long-standing reliance on white identity politics.
Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that real change can take place at the local level, and that activists, protesters, and political organizers can have a significant, positive impact. That’s what is happening in Chicago, where at least we are seeing the beginnings of real change. And it means that Laquan McDonald’s murder may yet save lives, increase the peace, and bring about more justice. Let that be his legacy.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books).