The Chicago Culture That Created Jason Van Dyke
Judges who questioned the veracity of police testimony were considered disrespectful traitors and were treated as such.
by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve
Oct 09, 2018
4 minutes
I was completing a decade-long study of the criminal court system in Chicago when I saw the autopsy diagram of Laquan McDonald. The Cook County medical examiner meticulously inventoried how all 16 bullets fired by a Chicago police officer, Jason Van Dyke, had entered and exited McDonald’s body on October 20, 2014. The Chicago Police Department’s official account of the incident claimed that McDonald had a knife and lunged at Van Dyke. Other officers were willing to vouch for that description—but the dashcam video showed otherwise. It took 13 months and a court order to expose the truth: McDonald was walking away from Van Dyke, and Van Dyke killed McDonald without provocation. In the
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