Wants to put an end to due process!

Racism works for him

The chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus on Friday questioned why only two of nearly two dozen Chicago Police officers accused of covering up the police shooting of Laquan McDonald have been pulled off the street.

The partner of the white police officer charged with the first-degree murder of the black teenager and the detective who led the investigation of the shooting were quietly placed on desk duty in mid-December, more than a year after giving accounts of the shooting that do not jibe with video evidence.

Interim Supt. John Escalante moved Police Officer Joseph Walsh and Detective David March to “administrative status” immediately after receiving a memo recommending the move by the city’s inspector general, Joseph Ferguson.

McDonald was gunned down in October 2014 in a barrage of 16 shots by Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. The shooting was initially ruled justified by a CPD internal investigation.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, said he’s “happy they’re at least moving on something” to punish Chicago Police officers who appear to have covered for Van Dyke in the latest example of the Police Department’s
code of silence.

But yanking only two officers of nearly two dozen officers off the street while continuing to pay them does not go nearly far enough.

“I’m not satisfied by any means. The process is moving, but it’s too slow. I can’t stand that it’s too slow. I hate to bring race into it, but if there were more black officers involved, I hate to think about it but I believe the process would go differently,” Sawyer said Friday.

“These officers should have been removed from active duty quickly and disciplined swiftly. If false reports were filed by these and other officers, they should be fired. If it leads to criminal activity, they should be criminally charged. Seeing that the delay has been so long, I don’t think people will hail this as any sort of victory. I don’t think it will re-establish trust in the police.”

In his official statement to investigators, Walsh gave an account of the shooting that backed up Van Dyke’s version of events: that McDonald was waving a knife and moving toward police when Van Dyke opened fire. March’s investigation likewise repeated those accounts, stating even that they matched up with dashboard camera video that captured the shooting.

That video shows McDonald walking briskly away from officers with his arms down as Van Dyke opens fire. Van Dyke has been charged in Cook County with murder and official misconduct in the shooting, and charging documents note that footage from a dashboard-mounted video camera does not show McDonald advancing toward officers when he was shot.

Ferguson recommended that Walsh and March be pulled off the street. That was just two days after the newly appointed head of the Independent Police Review Authority, Sharon Fairley, asked him to investigate all officers involved in events leading up to the shooting of McDonald as well as those officers tied to the investigation of that shooting.