Yahoo News Live: Chicago Protests after Dashcam Video Release
Hundreds took to the streets of Chicago overnight in largely peaceful protests after the release of a disturbing police dashcam video that showed the shooting that led to the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in Chicago in October 2014. The journalist who helped uncovered the video and the autopsy is Jamie Kalven. He joined Yahoo Finance Anchor Alexis Christoforous on “Yahoo News Live” to talk about the release of the video and the shooting death of McDonald.
Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke fired those 16 shots. He was charged with first-degree murder on Tuesday, more than a year after the shooting took place.
Kalven told Christoforous that a whistleblower who worked for the city of Chicago contacted Kalven and a colleague a few weeks after the incident and told them that “what had been reported as an act of self-defense was in fact a horrific execution.” The whistleblower also disclosed that there was dashcam video of the incident. Kalven was then able to track down witnesses who corroborated the whistleblower’s account.
Kalven had not seen the dashcam video until its public release on Tuesday. “I had the tape really minutely described by people who had seen it … so I wasn’t surprised by what it showed,” he said. However, he continued, “There is this power that video has that no prose can convey.”
Kalven told Christoforous that now that the dashcam video has been released, “The really central issue we’re confronting in Chicago is the culture of the department where, in this case, at every level of the department and at every turn of this process was to circle the wagons and to maintain a false narrative.”
