Chicago judge orders police torelease video of black teen's shooting death
By Fiona Ortiz
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A judge in Chicago ruled on Thursday that police must release a video of the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old black teenager in October 2014, after a journalist sued the city's police department to make the information public.
Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a police officer, including multiple times in the back. Police said he was lunging at them with a knife.
A lawyer for the teen's family has said the video from a patrol car dashboard camera showed McDonald with a knife in his hand but moving away from police.
The Chicago Police Department refused to release the video, saying it could taint ongoing Illinois state and federal investigations of the officer, whose identity and race have not been disclosed by the department.
In an 18-page ruling, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Franklin Valderrama said the police could not apply an exemption to Freedom of Information Act rules and must release the video by Nov. 25.
Valderrama said the police department failed to show that it is conducting its own investigation of the shooting or that disclosure of the video would interfere with investigations.
The city will appeal the ruling, said Bill McCaffrey, spokesman for the Chicago City Law Department. The appeals court could stop the release of the video while it hears the case.
McDonald's death came at a time of heated national debate over police use of lethal force, especially against blacks. Fatal police shootings in Chicago averaged 17 a year between 2008 and 2014, according to data from Chicago's police review authority.
About three-quarters of people shot by Chicago police were black; the city's population is about one-third black. Almost all shootings were found to be justified.
TEENS'S MOTHER OPPOSES VIDEO RELEASE
"We have a duty to hold accountable the people that we pay to protect us," said Brandon Smith, the freelance journalist who filed the lawsuit after what he described as months of delays from the police department over his Freedom of Information Act request for the video. "In this case they fought transparency."
"It's time for the city to release this video and not continue this fight," said Smith's lawyer, Matt Topic.
After the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked protests around the United States, some cities have opted to immediately release video of shootings in the name of transparency. Other cities have been reluctant to release them.
"This is about justice; this is about transparency. I hope what we are doing today sets precedent not only in Chicago but across the nation," said community activist William Calloway, who had looked into the shooting of McDonald and brought the case to Smith.
In April, Chicago agreed to pay $5 million in civil damages to McDonald's family, which had been exploring filing a wrongful death lawsuit.
Jeffrey Neslund, a lawyer for McDonald's mother, Tina Hunter, said she hopes that a lengthy federal investigation of the shooting ends with the police officer being indicted.
He said Hunter was not part of the battle to release the video.
"Like any mother, she doesn't want to see the execution of her son over and over again on YouTube and television. It's graphic, it's disturbing, and it's crystal clear that Laquan was not attacking or lunging at any police officer," Neslund said.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
