Chicago is bracing itself for more unrest as the city reacted to the release on Tuesday of a video showing a knife-wielding black teenager being shot 16 times by a white officer as he walked away from police.
Officer Jason Van Dyke was arrested and charged with first-degree murder over the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald as he walked down a street on Chicago’s southwest side in October 2014.
His arrest came just hours before a Chicago judge ordered the release of the dashcam video that graphically shows the fatal shooting. Protesters took to the streets of the city after the release of the footage.
Police argued that the officer fired in self-defence and Mr McDonald lunged at officers with his knife. The video shows the teenager walking diagonally across a street, away from police officers.
Seconds later, Mr McDonald falls to the ground as he is struck by gunshots. The teenager’s arms and legs jerk repeatedly as he lies on the ground from the impact of the bullets. Another police officer is then seen kicking an object away from Mr McDonald’s right hand.
On the ground Prosecutors have said that the shooting happened in 15 seconds but that the teenager was on the ground for 13 of those seconds.
Mr Van Dyke’s lawyer Daniel Herbert said the officer fired on the teenager because “he was in fear for his life” and that he was “concerned about the lives of [other] police officers”.
Demonstrators chanted “16 shots” as they marched in protest through downtown Chicago on Tuesday night, seizing on the latest controversy as another example of police aggression following a string of deaths of young black men at the hands of police officers.
The decision of a court to charge the police officer with murder appeared to have calmed tensions as the protests remained peaceful.
Hours earlier, city officials had condemned the actions of the police officer but urged demonstrators to remain calm, seeking to prevent a repeat of the violence in Ferguson and Baltimore that followed the deaths of young black men in incidents involving police.
City officials had resisted the release of the six-minute, 53-second dashcam video for months saying that it should not be made public until the investigations had been completed.
NBC Chicago reported that the manager of a nearby Burger King outlet had said that Chicago police had deleted a separate video from a security camera at the restaurant less than 100 yards away from the incident.
