Hundreds of pages of Chicago police reports released late on Friday by city officials depict a contrasting narrative to squad car video footage in the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer.
Several officers, including the one now charged with murder in Laquan McDonald’s death, reported that McDonald approached officers while armed with a knife.
However, squad car video released last week shows McDonald veering away from officers down a four-lane street in October last year before he was shot 16 times. It shows officer Jason Van Dyke opening fire from close range and continuing to fire after McDonald crumples to the ground.
Van Dyke told an investigator that McDonald was “swinging the knife in an aggressive, exaggerated manner” and that McDonald “raised the knife across chest” and pointed it at Van Dyke, according to one police report.
Another report describes how Van Dyke feared for his life.
“In defense of his life, Van Dyke backpedaled and fired his handgun at McDonald, to stop the attack,” one document reads. “McDonald fell to the ground, but continued to move and continued to grasp the knife, refusing to let go of it.”
The details emerged in hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed reports that prompted supervisors to rule McDonald’s death a justifiable homicide hours after he was shot.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office charged Van Dyke last month, the same day the city released video of the shooting. City officials had fought in court for months to keep the video from public release, before deciding last month not to fight a judge’s order.
The release of the footage triggered protests and calls for public officials, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to resign.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has called for an overall federal probe of police department practices, which top Democratic presidential candidates to local Illinois politicians have echoed.
Emanuel has since fired the police chief, expanded a body camera program and formed a task force.
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the Independent Police Review Authority conducts all investigations of officer-involved shootings and the agency was given the case report and videos.
He said that the US Department of Justice’s investigation was also ongoing.
“If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action,” he said in an e-mailed statement.
Messages left for the authority, Emanuel’s spokeswoman, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’ spokeswoman and a police union were not immediately returned.
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