Legacy of Laquan McDonald’s murder case remains uncertain as officer's release from prison nears

CHICAGO — After more than 1,200 days in custody for the murder of Laquan McDonald, former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke is about to go home.

The white patrol officer’s decision on Oct. 20, 2014, to fire 16 shots into McDonald as the Black teenager walked away from cops while holding a knife once seemed destined to alter the trajectory of a city long plagued by allegations of police brutality and a code of silence that allowed the routine trampling of the rights of citizens.

And in many ways, the city Van Dyke will return to has changed.

The mayor whose mishandling of the crisis helped derail a third term is gone — now the newly minted U.S. ambassador to Japan. The Chicago Police Department has seen wholesale changes in leadership.

Body-worn cameras are now the norm for beat cops, as it was a video of the teen’s killing that spread around the globe, and videos of shooting incidents that used to be kept under wraps are now released to the public as a matter of policy. A federal consent decree is in place with the hopes of ushering in even more reforms.

But in other ways, Van Dyke’s prosecution has not turned out to be the watershed moment many hoped for. Progress on the consent decree benchmarks has been frustratingly slow. Trust between the police and the communities they serve is more frayed than ever. The union representing rank-and-file officers has become increasingly radicalized. There has been an alarming spike in violent crime for which city leadership has had few answers.

Cara Hendrickson, a former assistant to the Illinois attorney general who helped draft the parameters of the federal consent decree, said that despite the hard work of many stakeholders to overhaul the Police Department, the city has come up woefully