OnTuesday(January 17th) a judge found three Chicago police officers not guiltyof covering up for the colleague who shot and killed teenager Laquan McDonald in 2014.
In her ruling,Cook County Associate Judge Domenica Stephenson said that the state had not proven beyonda reasonable doubt that the three formerofficersThomas Gaffney, David March, and Joseph Walsh tried to sabotage a criminal investigationagainstOfficer Jason Van Dyke, who shot and killed McDonald. In 2018 Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder in McDonald's death. (He is expected to be sentenced this Friday.)
The prosecutor on the case, Patricia Brown Holmes, said while the three officers gave the same account, their details were differentthan the footage found on the dashcam. The officers claim that McDonald lunged toward them with a knife, something that the footagecontradicts.
We are here because these officers and others tried to make the case against Van Dyke go away. Laquan McDonald was a human being. He deserved due process in the law and not to have police officers write false reports and shape a false narrative to justify his killing.
\u201cSo essentially, according to the courts, the Laquan McDonald shooting--followed by the year+ of city and police officials keeping records of it from the public--all came down to one bad apple.\u201d
Reverend Marvin Hunter, McDonald's great uncle, spoke about the decisionsoon after,saying "the verdict is that if you are a police officer, you can lie, cheat and steal...to say that these men are not guilty is to say that Jason Van Dyke is not guilty."
