Police videos, the cynical art of sacrifice and the need for trust

 

                                    Jack Doppelt

Dec. 2, 2015

[A version of this article was published as Police videos, the cynical art of sacrifice and the need for trust on Social Justice News Nexis (SJNN) on Dec. 2, 2015]

On Nov. 25, in the immediate aftermath of public events relating to the back-to-back murder charges of a gun-happy Chicago cop and the release of a damning and distracting video of Laquan McDonald’s death that had been withheld from the public for more than a year, I wrote this blog. I was enraged as was Curtis Black who wrote in the Chicago Reporter, it sure “looks like [Officer Van Dyke] is being sacrificed in order to protect the system that created him.” 

Another way to put it was the city was cravenly tossing one bad apple to pacify us. And we, in the media particularly, are so mesmerized by the glare of video that we literally lose sight of how this keeps repeating itself with institutional cover. 

Then yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, as Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was making the rounds to defend the city and his department, Mayor Emanuel fired McCarthy, announcing that “the public trust in the leadership of the department has been shaken and eroded.” 

Now one bad apple and one official have been offered up under the intense glare of public anger. Is this the accountability the public needs to trust? The mayor has also appointed a task force to review the system. What more is a mayor to do? 

It will of course take time for the task force to review and conclude and offer recommendations. Will relations with Chicago’s residents and communities fester in the interim? How will it not, if some basic questions that do not need months to investigate are not addressed? 

Maybe the first thing the task force can do is to advise the system publicly that to regain the public’s trust, questions like these need to be to answered no matter what the task force comes up with. 

To Mayor Emanuel: You said you did not see the video until after it was publicly released earlier this Thanksgiving week. If we believed you, shouldn’t we be even angrier that you and the city council approved a $5 million last April without taking the trouble to view the video that must have been the smoking gun to settle a case that had not yet even been filed? 

Followup to the city council: What were you told that had you be so willing to pay $5 million in taxpayer money without holding anyone accountable? 

To the Fraternal Order of Police: We expect that your role is to serve and protect fellow police officers. Do you feel any compunction that you are willing to accept whatever story police at the scene conspire to stand by, such as in this case that Laquan McDonald died of a single gunshot to the chest, after he had punctured a squad car’s tires and damaged the front windshield (without ever getting close enough to the vehicle to do either of those acts)? 

To State’s Attorney Alvarez: Should we feel grateful that you filed murder charges against Officer Van Dyke when, as you put it, the time was right and all the evidence was in, which was coincidentally the very day before a court ordered the video to be released? If I were Officer Van Dyke’s defense attorney, am I pleased about that coincidence, maybe just as pleased as Officer Dante Servin’s defense attorney was when you decided not to charge Officer Servin with murder only to have a judge dismiss all charges against him at trial last April, because, as the judge put it, you mischarged Servin with involuntarily manslaughter when he should have actually been charged with intending to kill Rekia Boyd? 

To Chicago police officers: How do you feel when you find out that fellow officers deleted 86 minutes of footage from a security camera at a Burger King restaurant near the scene? Relieved that you are willing to obstruct justice to cover one another’s back, or are you incensed or scared that you could be the one cop hung out to dry when city officials and the state’s attorney choose to duck and let you fall in the line of duty? 

Just a few questions that I think about now that I’ve watched another incriminating video that has me questioning the people we entrust with power.

[Postscripts: 

In March 2016, Anita Alvarez was defeated for re-election as State's Attorney by Kim Foxx, who got 58% of the vote to Alvarez's 29%. 

In Sept. 2018, the week the Van Dyke case was to go to trial, Rahm Emanuel announced that he would not seek re-election for mayor. 

In Jan. 2019, Van Dyke was sentenced to seven years in prison for the second-degree murder of McDonald.]

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