Killing of Laquan McDonald covered up by Chicago, USA police

This 17 December video from the USA is called Chicago: Laquan McDonald Protest.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

United States: Emails expose cover up of teens’ killing

Saturday 2nd January 2016

Chicago officials tried to bury evidence about police shooting

by Our Foreign Desk

NEWLY released email correspondence has indicated a cover-up by authorities in the US city of Chicago over the police shooting of a black teenager.

Thousands of messages were released in response to freedom of information requests from media related to the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

The messages released on Thursday clearly indicate that advisers to Mayor Rahm Emanuel knew the case could be politically explosive.

Mr McDonald was shot 16 times in October 2014 by police officer Jason Van Dyke. A folded three-inch pen knife was found on his body.

A video captured on the cop’s dashboard camera showing the youth retreating from the officer before being shot was withheld from the public for more than year by Mr Emanuel.

Mr Van Dyke pleaded not guilty this week to a charge of murder.

Mayoral spokesman Adam Collins sent a flurry of emails about media inquiries about the video, which the McDonald family’s lawyers were first shown in March 2015.

While the mayor denied seeing the damning footage before its release — a claim challenged by campaigners — the correspondence from Mr Collins shows that his department was already concerned about its effect.

The emails also indicate that Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) co-ordinated its response to the shooting with the mayor’s office and the police department.

IPRA chief administrator Scott Ando emailed the mayor’s deputy chief of staff Janey Rountree with a link to a website that raised questions about police accounts of the shooting.

And a March 11 email from Mr Ando asked for witness interview transcripts “for their use in settlement negotiations with” the McDonald family.

In May Mr Collins cautioned IPRA spokesman Larry Merritt to “tread lightly” when a reporter asked for an interview about the case.

And in the same month Mr Collins complained to colleagues that the IPRA did not follow his recommendation on how to respond to a TV station about Mr McDonald.

Just before the video’s release Mr Collins wrote to police and law department representatives urging them to speak with “one voice” on the topic.

Facing a growing political crisis stemming from his role in the cover-up of the October 2014 police murder of Laquan McDonald, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced last Wednesday so-called “reform” measures that will, in fact, increase the ability of the police to violently attack workers and youth while doing nothing to halt the wave of police murders: here.