The cop who shot Laquan McDonald has been charged, and the information contained in the indictment is pretty horrifying:
Rarely have officers here faced such charges, and the prosecutor’s announcement came amid a national debate over race, police shootings and a growing number of encounters captured on video showing police conduct. 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.
The charges seemed likely to blunt reaction to the release of the video. Some who have seen it say it shows Laquan McDonald, 17, being struck by 16 bullets, some of them hitting him even after he had fallen to the street. A county prosecutor, William G. Delaney, said that Officer Van Dyke fired all 16 shots while other officers did not fire at all. Officer Van Dyke arrived less than 30 seconds before he started shooting, the prosecutor said, and he fired for 14 or 15 seconds. For 13 of those seconds, Mr. Delaney said, Mr. McDonald was already on the ground.
They determined Van Dyke began shooting six seconds after arriving on scene, well after the other officers had determined there was no need to use force. He showed up, started shooting, and shot 13 of the 16 rounds after Laquan was already hit and on the ground. A civilian witness stated under oath that McDonald did not ever approach them, and seemed to be doing whatever he could to get away from the police, not threaten them. Other officers testified that Van Dyke was reloading and other officers had to tell him to stop shooting because Laquan was struggling to breathe. There’s also this:
Burger King came out publicly and stated that Chicago Police deleted their footage on the murder of #LaquanMcDonald pic.twitter.com/VFA3unJWps
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) November 24, 2015
Meanwhile, white supremacists are opening fire on #blacklivesmatter protesters. You know, people who are trying to stop police from executing them in the street.
? Martin
Thanks, Obama.
Tom Levenson
Obstruction charges to follow for the file fuckers, I trust. (In reality, I’d be shocked if that happens, but it should.)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
And yet the officer will probably be acquitted, because the jury will decide that they just can’t judge a cop for doing his job, even when the cop has very clearly fucked up AT BEST.
Juries have decided over and over again that cops never have to be accountable for their actions, ever. I have no idea how we change that.
oldster
Spoliation of evidence is kind of a BFD in the eyes of prosecutors and judges, and I’m not sure the thin blue line provides total immunity from it. Even in Cook County.
I hope they go after all of them–the shooter and the deleters–and nail them to the wall.
Anoniminous
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Wrongful death suits against the police departments and city, county, state government for hundreds of millions of dollars. We know appealing to morality won’t work, hitting them in the pocket book is an untried course of action.
Just Some Fuckhead
With all the conflicting eyewitness reports and no clear video footage, it’s really amazing they were able to build a case in just over a year. Hats off to Chicago PD!
Hal
Just had a friend on Facebook post a terrible story of a pregnant woman who was raped and murdered by two black suspects. His biggest question? “Where’s Al Sharpton?” Never mind that two people were charged, will be tried and in all likelihood convicted (that’s saying they plead not guilty.) But this story? He and so many other people I grew up with of the all lives matter brigade never, ever, have anything to say about stories like this.
? Martin
@Anoniminous: You can’t hit public agencies in the pocketbook because there is no risk of them going out of business due to that action. It’s just a new money funnel from taxpayers to some named group (not that victims shouldn’t be compensated).
Speaking as one, if you want public employees to be held accountable you fire them or toss them in jail.
BTW, same argument applies to bankers and the heads of other ‘critical’ sectors of the economy.
John Revolta
@Anoniminous: Meh. What do they care? Joe Taxpayer foots the bill for all such anyway.
Now, if it came out of their pension fund………………………..
scav
@Anoniminous: They didn’t even wait for the suit in this instance. Family apparently “won” 5 million without filing. And this is working out in tandem with the off-duty cop who fired over his shoulder from inside his car while intervening in some sort of mild dispute. He was acquitted because the judge found the involuntary manslaughter charges too mild.
Calouste
There were some numbers doing the rounds a while back how German police fired a total of around 100 rounds in a whole calendar year, in about 60 or 70 separate incidents. So in most incidents, they fired one or two shots. Of course no such numbers exist in the US, but its pretty obvious from incident reports that police couldn’t care less whether any innocent bystanders, or even their colleagues, are hit by stray bullets or ricochets that result from their hail of lead.
Jeffro
@Hal:
That’s their favorite little saying to throw out there these days. Anything to distract or otherwise change the subject.
Gin & Tonic
@Calouste: There was an article in The Economist nearly a year ago that pointed out that in the latest available year of data, police in Great Britain killed 0 people, police in Germany killed 8 people and police in the US killed 458 people.
Paul in KY
I know all you anti-death-penaltyiers will disagree/harsh on me, but if this guy is guilty of that, then his execution would send a big message to other law enforcement people that they are in no way above the law & the ultimate punishment can happen to them as well.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Put less white people on juries.
Dork
Shooting for 15 seconds? Yup, that would appear to be textbook murder.
However, I bet he walks.
goblue72
@Gin & Tonic: Yet when you point that out to the wingers and small dick gun-nuts, they scream its not the same because we are a bigger country. When you then point out the per capita math, they scream that those countries are more “homogeneous” than ours (meaning, we have more darkies). Point out that their bumbfuk town is a ton more white than your average London neighborhood, and they scream you are playing the race card.
dedc79
@Paul in KY:
This is a variation on the same claim death penalty advocates make – that it has a deterrent effect on those who might otherwise commit violent offenses. That claim is, to put it mildly, unproven.
Paul in KY
@Calouste: I don’t know if it matters or not, but over in Germany, it’s the law that if you give a police officer any grief or backtalk or non-compliance, they can legally beat the shit out of you. Many of our airmen found out about the basic differences between US policemen & German policemen, when they made the mistake of reacting to them like they would Joe Towniepoliceman.
Does that pre-empt the use of deadly force?
JustRuss
@Paul in KY: Whereas sending him to prison for life would essentially be condoning his actions and giving the cops carte blanche.
Paul in KY
@dedc79: Generally, there is no deterrent to the death penalty. The fucks never think they’ll be caught. To me, it is a punishment. A very harsh punishment, but a punishment nevertheless.
However, in case of police, it might serve as a ‘bad example’ not to be followed.
Paul in KY
@JustRuss: They have carte blanche right now. Murdering a young man in cold blood is not a crime (to me) that can be expiated by sitting in a room for 40 or more years.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Anoniminous:
As people have already pointed out, police departments are already paying out millions of dollars in settlements every year with absolutely no change in behavior. Chicago alone has paid half a billion dollars in police brutality settlements.
You can have the Justice Department get a consent decree against each individual department, but that takes a long time and a lot of manpower. LAPD has been operating under one for 20 years and we’re only just starting to get the Titanic pointed slightly away from the iceberg.
Gin & Tonic
@goblue72: More good statistics, same source. Great infographic in there about firearm deaths by state. The highest and lowest rates correspond very, very closely with an electoral map of red v blue. The redder the state, the higher the rate of death by firearm.
Mandalay
@Paul in KY:
Are you suggesting that if he gets (say) a fifteen year sentence instead of death then other cops might just shrug that off?
I don’t understand your reasoning. Actually sending a cop to prison for murder is something of a novelty, and surely a massive deterrent in itself. I don’t see how death sentence would be a significantly stronger catalyst for changing cop behavior.
PurpleGirl
Shit like this has been going on for a long time… Shades of Amadou Dialo. It’s long past time cops were charged and ended up in prison. They won’t do well in prison, will need to be in protective custody and they deserve it.
Paul in KY
@Mandalay: 15 years is a sentence. Death is a SERIOUS sentence.
singfoom
I think this is up to the video. Yes, we’ve seen bad video before. Yes, Tamir Rice was summarily executed and they couldn’t convict on that. That said, if they gave the family five million dollars before a suit and he’s being fired, I think there’s a chance he could be convicted.
It sounds like the video captures him just emptying round after round into the kid after he’s already down. That might be enough for a jury to convict. There’s no counterargument to why he had to shoot 16 times since the kid was moving away from him, even if he had a knife.
I’m glad this guy is no longer on the streets of Chicago. (The Officer)
goblue72
@Paul in KY: I’m sorry, but are you talking about 2015 or 1965 or 1945? And citation please.
singfoom
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I don’t know what the long term solution is to make police police their own better, but the best idea I’ve heard so far is tying the payments for judgements into the Police Union’s pension fund. At least split between the municipality/police union…
It’d take a legislative act in order to make that happen, and Police Unions have plenty of power in every single political district…..so maybe it’s a pipe dream. If you can’t make them personally liable, that’s the next best thing…
goblue72
@Gin & Tonic: I wonder how that map would overlay with average educational levels.
Paul in KY
@goblue72: Early 1980s.
Edit: Leaving work, will respond tomorrow morn.
Another Holocene Human
Never let the cops touch your security equipment. Tell them when and where you’ll furnish them with a copy.
OTOH, this is CPD we’re talking about–they walk in and take shit without a warrant. Time to start backing that shit up silently in the cloud.
goblue72
@singfoom: Training would help. We do an awful job training our police and the cop unions resist it as well.
Why German Police Rarely Reach for Their Guns
Another Holocene Human
A good tactic with cops: “Oh, I don’t have access to the security system. Only blah blah blah manager handles that. She’ll be here in six hours [after your shift is over], can you wait?”
They never wait.
Oatler.
They’re like the “paramilitary” groups of Central America.
Another Holocene Human
@goblue72: It seems like we train our cops to be more paranoid and itchy trigger fingered, not less.
I’ve heard a lot of retired cops express amazement at what’s going on in our post-SWAT era. Do you think there’s something to that?
Somehow I doubt cops were cutting down 1000+ “civilians” a year from the end of WWII through let’s say the end of the 60s. The 70s crime wave (and still I think the police were less armed and shooting people less) and the war on drugs created a new normal.
singfoom
@goblue72: Oh sure. I’d say the basics of American Police training, especially for large urban police forces should be de-escalation and use of force only when warranted.
If that was the training philosophy from the get go, you’d see less of these incidents. But we don’t train them enough and emphasize the right things. That instinct to use force immediately if orders are’t complied with within a microsecond has to be taught out.
Amir Khalid
@Paul in KY:
To add to the other voices here against the death penalty, for murderous policemen or for anyone else, it is both wrong per se and not a proven deterrent. Indeed, it could arguably turn a cop who, under colour of duty, needlessly kills a person into a martyr in the eyes of his similarly-inclined colleagues.
japa21
@Hal: When they ask “Where’s Al Sharpton?” just answer , “Probably somewhere telling folks how glad he is they caught the guys.”
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JPL
John, Earlier this morning we were speculating on the shooting in Minneapolis at the BLM protest. Five people were shot and the MSM hasn’t spent time covering it. What would have happened if under the same scenario, the shooters were brown or Muslim? We’d have travel warnings.
Amir Khalid
If you put Deputy Barney Fife in a TV show today, would he be denounced as an anti-cop caricature?
PurpleGirl
From Wikipedia:
The shooting of Amadou Diallo occurred on February 4, 1999, when Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss. The officers fired a combined total of 41 shots, 19 of which struck Diallo, outside his apartment at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of The Bronx. The four were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit. All four officers were charged with second-degree murder and acquitted at trial in Albany, New York.[1]
Diallo was unarmed at the time of the shooting, and a firestorm of controversy erupted subsequent to the event as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both within and outside New York City. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were central to the ensuing controversy.
Back to me:
Forty-one shots fired by four cops… nineteen hit Diallo. The cops were riding down the street in an unmarked patrol car and thought he looked like a suspect they were looking for. They backed the car up, entered the lobby, where he was trying to enter the building to go home. He was taking out ID when the cops thought he was reaching for a gun and they shot him. Think about that for a moment… forty-one shots and nineteen hits by four plainsclothese cops. It still rankles me. And the cops were acquitted by a jury in Albany.
Hoodie
@Gin & Tonic: The graph on the number of firearms since Obama took office and the corresponding decline in the number of gun-holding households is interesting. The graph suggests that the 27% is well armed, and the rest of us are not. Should liberals consider having weapons to protect themselves from right wing nut jobs? The gun industry might want to rethink its marketing. They could adopt dual marketing schemes, the old one directed to right wing paranoids and their various bogeymen using the standard NRA pitch and a new one directed to liberals afraid of the right wing paranoids. They could conceivably double their sales.
JPL
@PurpleGirl: Rudy Giuliani cleaned up NYC and kept it safe.
ugh
NotMax
@Paul in KY
A fine is a punishment.
Incarceration or other removal/distancing from society is a punishment.
The death penalty is revenge raised to the nth power. It is legalized brutality.
(And that’s without even broaching what the advent of DNA evidence has demonstrated.)
PurpleGirl
@JPL: Yeah, a number of the increased patrol programs were done with federal money and started under David Dinkins. Giuliani ranted against keeping ferrets as pets… we really needed protection from ferrets. Giuliani is probably wetting his pants these days. I have no use for his petty, revenge fueled ideas.
Yes, I know you’re snarking. (But I feel compelled to counter any thing positive said about him, snark or not.)
? Martin
@Hoodie: Well, a shrinking addressable market is almost a guarantee that manufacturers will start to go out of business. Once its apparent this corner has turned, the extinction burst will end and the number of guns being purchased will drop off. Mostly we just need to wait the process out.
? Martin
@NotMax: Death penalty is punishment to the family of the person being executed, not to the person being executed. It plays out in every violent thriller with the protagonist being forced to watch some loved one being killed. It’s perfectly clear where the punishment is being directed.
JPL
@PurpleGirl: At that time, the NYTimes did a comparison between Boston and NYC on how they were reducing crime. The results were the same but the methods completely different. Boston utilized more afternoon programs and cooperation with the gangs and Churches. I’m not even sure how to google it but it was interesting comparison of the two approaches.
goblue72
@Hoodie: A good soshulist is an armed one.
JPL
@JPL: Here’s the article for those able to access the NYTimes
I forgot that San Diego was also included in the comparison but since the article is over fifteen years old, I forgive myself.
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Brachiator
@Anoniminous:
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Sadly, there is nothing untried about this.
And it’s not just about the cops. People just don’t want to deal with hard truths. Communities have to rip up the unwritten social contract that says that cops can get rid of “undesirables,” no questions asked.
In Orange County, a mentally ill man was beaten to death by the cops. A store owner who was tired of having the man loiter around called the cops. Some of the officers knew the man and his disability, and one can be heard on a body mic saying that they were going to “fvck him up.”
Yesterday, just before the civil case began, the city of Fullerton settled with the family for $4.9 million. The city did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement. Previously, two officers involved had been acquitted of wrong doing.
Apparently, the fatal injuries to the young white man, Kelly Thomas, happened by evil magic.
By the way, the case would never have been brought up at all had not a blogger put pictures of a horribly injured Thomas online. Every crime reporter on every local TV and radio station accepted the police version that the man had resisted arrest and that the cops did not believe that the blows that they “had to” land had been particularly severe.
Remember, even though the man lived in the area and was known, his life didn’t matter once he had become a bothersome nuisance. And a jury had a chance to punish the cops, but, hey, you know, the cops have to take out the city’s trash now and again. It’s part of the job.
So do not, do not, talk about rogue cops or bullies or psychopaths. Or about juries that kowtow to authority. Because that is not where the problem lies. Sometimes we are no better than the cities in other countries like Brazil that allowed some of the police to act as death squads, killing homeless youths and petty thieves, because their lives were worth nothing. Little more than vermin.
BTW, and positively, there are some reports that lawyers for the cops and the city overheard some of the jurors talking during a break, and then scrambled to get the settlement done. It appears that these jurors were ready to do the right thing. So, there is hope.
Info on the Thomas case here.
Fair Economist
The Chicago case won’t have the death penalty because Illinois abolished it in 2011. I don’t think sentencing one of these killer cops to death would have all that much deterrent effect on other killer cops, but I think it would be a big help to getting rid of the death penalty.
scav
@WordPress Developers: Everyone needed a bathroom break and besides, a little exercise (even if only repeatedly hitting the refresh button and swearing a lot) before the upcoming food onslaught will probably do everyone good.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@singfoom:
People who are mentally ill or otherwise impaired (such as in a diabetic crisis) have a very high likelihood of being killed by the cops because they are exactly the people who are unable to obey when given an order and if cops are trained that anyone who doesn’t obey an order is a deadly threat, citizens get killed.
There probably is a way for Congress to mandate the way cops are trained by how grants are distributed or even direct regulation, but of course our current Congress won’t do it.
John Cole
I’m shrugging my head here. The solution to any of our society’s ills will never be MOAR DEATH PENALTY.
tinare
I would think that for a cop, time served in the general population of any prison would be a much worse punishment than the dealth penalty. I can’t imagine they’d be too popular.
singfoom
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Yes, as Brachiator noted above in the Thomas case. Or in the case of James Boyd. Or countless other examples of mentally ill people being hurt/killed by the police when they don’t comply.
And yes, our current Congress would consider that anti-cop somehow. And it’s likely that state level legislation would be required for the training to change as well.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@John Cole:
Word. It’s state sanctioned homicidal vengeance. Not a “penalty.”
J R in WV
WV has no death penalty. It was ended long enough ago that I don’t remember it happening…
My dad was against the death penalty, but with a couple of small exceptions: one was for killing corrections officers, because someone already sentenced to life without parole wouldn’t have any reason not to attack the corrections officers around him. Secondly, lifers in prison killing someone, like fellow prisoners to protect the incarcerated from predators in prison with them.
But I don’t think the death penalty, or any penalty, really, inhibits people who are killers from doing their horrible thing. They aren’t thinkers, they’re doers.
MomSense
@John Cole:
I have no mercy for murderers or child molesters but I think we have to preserve our own humanity and dignity and that means no death penalty.
I really hope that they get a conviction in this case. Even so, it won’t bring Laquan back. My heart breaks for this young man, his family, and friends.
TooManyJens
They put the video up on a website and gave the password to the media, but said that “due to limited bandwidth,” the video would only be available for an hour. You will not be surprised to learn that the website has crashed.
The Other Chuck
@Paul in KY:
I disagree with you, don’t really have it in me to be harsh right now … Sure, if the kliller cop is really a piece of shit, he deserves to die, or maybe it might even be expedient. Hell, I’m not even above vengeance. Thing is, I just cannot abide the way our society is being warped both by the by vengeance porn of execution itself, and the jaw-dropping outrage-inducing (or ought to be) travesty of justice that is the process of assigning the death penalty, not the least of which is the racial context it’s so deeply steeped in. And a deeply flawed death penalty isn’t something I’m willing to live with while our society tries to figure it out.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
The kid’s name was Laquan. How long before the usual assholes jump all over that? Guy with a name like that just deserves to be roughed up, if not killed. People with aggressively Black sounding names like that just aren’t really Americans, you know? They aren’t like us, not like us good Americans.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@The Other Chuck:
In all seriousness, though, the quickest way to get rid of the death penalty is to use it on a few police. You’ll get the right wing nuts on board that way. They won’t think too highly of putting people to death if they think some of their asshole police douchebags might get done in.
PIGL
@Paul in KY: How is that de jure right you allege German police to have any different from the de facto right police in the USA have to beat the shit out of anyone they feel like? You’re saying it’s better? How often does it escalate to murder in Germany? Apparently, never.
PIGL
@singfoom: The best solution is to elect municipal politicians who start holding senior officers accountable for the performance of the men under their command. If they’re going to act all paramilitary, then they can deal with the discipline, public service unions be damned.
The second best solution would be to select state governments prepared to revoke civic charters, to enforce this behaviour.
Nothing much else is going to do it…the alternative is civil war.
PIGL
@Oatler.: You mean “death squads”? Yup. And I believe that is why this is tolerated. So the death squads will be ready, for realz, when needed.
AxelFoley
@Paul in KY:
Co-sign.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: He’ll be a martyr for his buddies whether he’s doing LWOP or on death row. As I stated, I don’t think the non-death sentence fits the crime. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Yes. There would be some ‘concern’ group that would get their panties all in a wad about his caricature.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: I disagree.
Paul in KY
@? Martin: IMO, it is certainly a punishment to the one being executed. There are cases where it will also be a punishment to the condemned’s family, but if you take that conjecture, there will be times when it will also be a blessing to the condemned’s family (in those cases where he/she also terrorized their own family).
pseudonymous in nc
Roid rage, inadequate training, little man syndrome, RESPECT MY AUTHORITY, cops who think they’re occupying soldiers. The US basically has a lot of cops — because any bumfuck municipality can get its own force — and a lot of shitty cops.
Paul in KY
@Fair Economist: Don’t expect it to have a deterrent value. It is a just punishment, IMO. However, in cases of would-be murderous cops (who would all be aware of one of their own on death row), it might make one or two of them think twice before giving in to their evil urges.
Paul in KY
@John Cole: Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? In this case, it’s not, IMO.
Paul in KY
@tinare: They won’t be in the general population, silly.
Paul in KY
@J R in WV: It doesn’t. Taking someone’s precious life, condemning them to everlasting darkness (to me) deserves a harsher punishment than living out your life in a room (watching TV, jacking off, corresponding with various ‘fans’, etc. etc.)
Paul in KY
@The Other Chuck: It is not vengeance (in my case). Others may consider it vengeance (family of murdered, etc.), but to me, it is the just punishment for the terrible crime.
Paul in KY
@PIGL: My conjecture: Because the German police take no shit & also don’t have to ‘tiptoe’ around regulations/laws, etc. It is codified right there. Thus they can apply the amount of corrective force right then & there to get compliance & stop situations from escalating. The populace also knows this & generally takes that into account when interacting with them.
Have never been in Germany myself, just listened to situations recounted by servicemen who did tours over there.