CHICAGO — Police officers who watched a colleague shoot a black Chicago teenager 16 times filed reports depicting a very different version of events than what dash-cam footage showed, portraying the teen as far more menacing than he appeared in the video.
The city released hundreds of pages of documents late Friday pertaining to the October 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Jason Van Dyke, a white police officer. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder late last month, only hours before the department released the video under a court order, sparking protests and accusations of a coverup.
The video, which police kept from the public for more than a year, shows McDonald, on foot, veering away from officers on a four-lane street when Van Dyke, seconds after exiting his squad car, opened fire from close range. The officer continued shooting McDonald after he had crumpled to the ground and was barely moving.
In the newly released police reports, however, several officers, including Van Dyke and his partner, described McDonald as aggressively approaching officers while armed with a knife. At least three other officers supported key details in Van Dyke’s version of events.
Van Dyke told an investigator that McDonald was “swinging the knife in an aggressive, exaggerated manner” and that McDonald “raised the knife across the chest” and pointed it at Van Dyke, according to one police report. Multiple officers reported that even after McDonald was down, he kept trying to get up with the knife in his hand.
The reports add to mounting questions about the Chicago Police Department’s handling of the shooting, as activists allege that police and city officials tried to cover it up.
