Questions surround a Chicago Police fatal shooting of a teen

By MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times columnist

Few people know Laquan McDonald’s name.

Yet the only thing that separates the 17-year-old from Staten Island’s Eric Garner and Ferguson’s Michael Brown is geography.

On Oct. 20, the black teen was fatally shot by a white Chicago police officer on the city’s Southwest Side.

While hundreds in Chicago have marched in the name of Garner and Brown, McDonald’s death remains a mystery.

There were no smiling photos of McDonald, who died a ward of the state, accompanying the brief media reports of his death.

There was only a photograph of the police car and yellow tape blocking off the dark street.

According to reports, Chicago Lawn District officers responded to a call about someone breaking into cars in the 4100 block of South Karlov.

Officers found the 17-year-old “with a strange gaze about him carrying a knife which he refused to drop when police ordered him to do so,” said Pat Camden, a spokesman for the police union. For a while, police followed the teen, and eventually were able to use their squad cars to box him against a fence near 41st and Pulaski.

“An officer shot him in the chest when he refused to comply with orders to drop the knife and continued to approach the officers,” Camden said.

The Cook County Medical Examiner determined McDonald had multiple gunshot wounds and ruled his death a homicide.

Witnesses have told a University of Chicago professor and an investigative journalist that rather than threatening officers, the teen was “shying away”, and that an officer continued to shoot McDonald as he lay on the ground.

“We’re being told that there is a video being kept under lock and key of the young man being shot down like a dog in the street,” said Craig Futterman, founder of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project of the University of Chicago’s Mandel Aid Clinic.

A Chicago Police Department spokesman declined to answer questions about the case or confirm the existence of a video.

The police-involved shooting was handed off to the Independent Police Review Authority or “IPRA” as it is known. On Wednesday, a spokesman for IPRA also would not comment on this pending investigation.

“We won’t see anything for 18 months,” said Futterman, referring to the average time it takes for IPRA to finish an investigation.

Futterman is calling on demonstrators to “raise their voices on behalf of Laquan.”

“When there is a high profile case involving a civilian, the police department is going to provide information because it is in the public interest. Isn’t it in the public interest when a 17-year-old African-American boy’s life is taken by a police officer?” he asked.

Meanwhile, whether spurred by the police crisis unfolding across the nation, or criticism, IPRA is in the midst of revising its procedures.

“New cases would be categorized. The officer-involved shooting would receive the highest priority followed by excessive force cases where there are significant injuries,” said IPRA spokesman Larry Merritt.

Futterman and Jamie Kalven, an investigative reporter who routinely looks into allegations of police abuse, are calling on the Chicago Police Department to immediately release any video footage it may have of the shooting.

“The depth of distrust between community and the police cannot be greater than what it is. The only way to deal with that mistrust is by openness and not secrecy,” Futterman said.

Kalven, who was a plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit that resulted in police misconduct files being opened to the public, agrees.

“The healthy way of responding and the way it restores confidence and trust is to be open and transparent… I think there are serious, serious questions about what happened to Laquan McDonald,” he said.

Those questions deserve answers now rather than later.