“A Chicago police officer facing first-degree murder for fatally shooting a teen 16 times was released from county jail Monday evening, hours after a judge set bond at $1.5 million,” usatoday.com reporters. “Officer Jason Van Dyke had been in jail since Tuesday after prosecutors charged him with the Oct. 20, 2014, shooting of Laquan McDonald. Also on Tuesday, the city released dashcam video that shows the teen, who is black, being shot by Van Dyke, who is white.” Wait. Who said anything about the crime being racially motivated – other than USA Today? Does that mean . . .

that the left will be incensed at the mass media’s “inflammatory rhetoric” when protesters wreak havoc in The Windy City? Doubtful. Anyway, the police union’s got Van Dyke’s back.

Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago police union, said after Monday’s hearing that the union continues to stand by Van Dyke. He said that fellow officers have donated an undisclosed sum to a bail fund set up by Van Dyke’s wife.

“I think (the video shows) Officer Van Dyke steps into training mode and takes action that we believe at that time was justified,” Angelo said.

Herbert said his client feared for his life and was acting out of self-defense. He added that the video doesn’t portray the full portrait of what led to the shooting and that his client would ultimately be vindicated when all the evidence is presented at trial.

“When you see the video alone, it does not seem like a justifiable shooting,” Herbert said. “But there are certain things I know that quite frankly nobody else knows.”

We look forward to knowing what we don’t know. As if you didn’t know.

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59 COMMENTS

      • Only one implying is you. Lynching is what you’re doing here. We have a system, he ain’t guilty til he’s convicted.

        • Silly bootlicker, the article cites data showing that the vast majority of cops face zero discipline for complaints. That implies the system you put all your faith in is massively in favor of police.

          The irony of you griping about “lynching” when cops and their cheerleaders regularly condemn “copkillers”, or pretty much anyone who has given police offense (i.e. Frank Serpico), without any sort of due process.

        • You used to lie and claim the moral high ground, trannysoreass. Now you are finally admitting you’re no better than the “cops and their cheerleaders”. Man has a trial upcoming, but in the court of troll opinion you’ve already lynched him.

        • >people can’t watch the video
          >people shouldn’t form an opinion based on said video

          I do like how your reaction to actual data criticizing the fairness of your precious system is to cry troll. Poor baby. 🙂

        • Silly troll. Caught in still another lie you try to deflect my justified criticism by claiming I said things I didn’t.. This is about one man on trial. That man is entitled to a fair trial. Period. And your claims of moral superiority are proven, once again, to be false.

          Now, go ahead and use your favorite word “irony” and accuse me of crimes I never committed in an attempt to cover for your own weakness.

        • The entire system from top to bottom is biased towards the police, bootlicker. The trial is merely the final phase of this one-sided system. The NYT article exposes the folly of the first line of accountability: the police themselves.

          Then there is the statistical outlier of indicting a cop: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/

          And finally, there is the law itself, which is written to give the police massive benefit of the doubt via qualified immunity.

          And yet you still bloviate about “the system” and claim a moral high ground for your supposed neutrality. 🙂

        • Now you got mad just cause I pointed out a simple truth. Poor troll. Hurt feelings. Wah. Wah. Wah.

          Well. It’s been fun once again exposing your lies. But I have a job to go to in the morning. I’m sure you’ll reply with a hate filled rant. But I really don’t care. Good night.

        • The delusional government animal ignores data and chants his faith in his system. Typical. 🙂

    • Bingo. Our comments about “justified” or “unjustified” merely contribute to this “Facebook Jury” mentality that’s been taking the nation by storm. Remember Palmer, that dentist in the Zimbabwe poaching case? His life was trashed because his character was assaulted. The fact that legally he was exonerated mattered nothing, because people had already formed an opinion based on their own biases and spread that opinion far and wide before any of the relevant facts reached the surface.

      TL;DR, it’s fine to have an opinion, but don’t present it as fact before all the facts are out.

      • Except Palmer was already a convicted poacher well before the incident in Zimbabwe. And according to the PH who guided him, Palmer insisted on a night hunt when it would be impossible to identify the prey, because he was pressed for time and wanted to hunt multiple animals on that trip.

        If you believe in ethical hunting, Palmer is not the man to defend.

  4. THIS cop has some 18 complaints against him for excessive force/ racist BS. The city paid out $350000 on one. I see manslaughter at the most. Commission of a crime and the PCP laden “boy” brandished a knife. Hell- they’d shoot ME for that(an OFWG). But not 16 times(I hope)…the natives are restless.

  5. We had a cop in Milwaukee that was forced to shoot a homeless schizophrenic who over powered him, took his baton and was beating the cop in the head. He emptied his weapon (14 shots) in what was ultimately a justified shooting. The cop was exonerated of any charges, and even the DOJ concluded his actions were reasonable.
    However, the liberal chief and mayor had to try to appease the BLM gang and fired the cop anyway, deciding that his actions started the chain of events when he searched the guy for concealed weapons. The guy’s career is destroyed, his life is in shambles and even now, they continue to protest the shooting. Nothing short of giving him a “necklace” of burning tires like Winnie Mandela’s crew was fond of will satisfy these marxist thugs. It will not be long before they employ those tactics here.

  6. Chicago pd created part of this issue on their own. Cases like that bartender beating that they tried to cover up cause this stuff. If they ate their own as needed these accusations would get less traction.

    Personally I would like to know what the results of the investigation into the camera footage at the burger king nearby gleaned. Those are serious allegations if true.

    Rahm and co don’t care about fixing the issue as much as looking good. Thats why the whole gun issue gets pushed by them; it is an easy scapegoat to blame an inanimate object than a shitty person who will use any weapon to hurt others.

    • I lived in the city for 6 years-and live 10 miles south now. I’ve known many Chi-cops in my 60+ years. Almost all azzwholes. BUT-you couldn’t pay me enough to be a cop especially on the south or westsides. It’s the most f###ed up place in America. So I get why this cop shot the young PCP addled perp. I have no idea being surrounded and having several cops close by permits you to shoot him many times while lying still( you’d think they were swat boys shooting a dog)…these are large hardened experienced cops who could have easily tasered him/pepper sprayed or just tackled his dumbazz…

      • I disagree that responding police should have tried to tackle, pepper spray, or taser the person with the knife. First of all, pepper spray can be wildly ineffective. Second, if you miss with a taser, you have no follow-up shots. Third, only a fool would willingly engage in hand-to-hand combat when your opponent has a knife because your opponent could deliver a life-ending slash to your neck (carotid artery) in the blink of an eye.

        The suspect made two monumental mistakes:
        (1) He didn’t stop and drop the knife when police confronted him.
        (2) He brought a knife to a gunfight.

        And it is quite possible the police officer who pulled the trigger made a monumental mistake: he kept shooting after the suspect went down.

        • Uncommon-Did you SEE the tape??? I guess the po-leece need to get home safe without risking their precious lives…

        • I’ve watched the tape, and I don’t have a problem with the shoot. It was unnecessary to fire 16 times, but that’s more than likely a training issue. A bad guy with a knife can kill you just as easily as a bad guy with a gun, especially if you’re unwilling to shoot him. I was pepper sprayed 2x a year for 7 years and have deployed it several times in the real world, pepper spray only works if the person isn’t determined to continue the activity that prompted you to spray them. Tasers also have a high failure rate. Both barbs have to embedded in the skin of the subject for it to work. If you miss, or the barbs are blocked by heavy clothing, you’re screwed. As far as engaging in a physical altercation with a man armed with a knife goes, are you out of your mind? You’ve apparently never seen what a knife can do to a human body. An MP was coming out of a bar on base one night after doing a walk through prior to closing time and was attacked by a guy with a knife. The guy slashed him one time on the back of his right arm. That one slash sliced all the way through his triceps down to the bone. He had to have emergency surgery and he was lucky he didn’t bleed out before we could get him to the hospital.

    • From just what’s on the tape, it certainly does not seem like any of the officer’s lives were immediately in danger. I would be interested to see this mystery evidence the defense speaks of.
      What I don’t get is the “16” times issue. If you are going to shoot someone, shoot as many times as it takes. I don’t have a problem with the round count in and of itself. It just doesn’t seem like there should have been the first one, at that time.

      • Agreed, it’s either a good shoot or it isn’t. A big deal was made here in St. Louis during the Mike Brown deal about the number of shots fired. I don’t see how it matters if you shoot the guy once or 56 times, if one shot isn’t justified then it’s a bad shoot and if 56 shots were necessary to end a lethal threat then it’s a good shoot. The count doesn’t matter.

        Frankly I’m amazing this guy put 100% of rounds fired on target… Definitely not the norm.

        • All true, but never let the truth get in the way of a good politicization…

          It’s similar to the all the big deal made of Brown being “unarmed.” It simply does not matter. But that does not stop the MSM and all the sycophants from going off on “unarmed” like it means something.

          Imminent death or severe bodily injury. Ability, Opportunity, Jeopardy. These are the things that matter…

          But no. The press tries to make it about everything else BUT those things…

        • MSM makes hay of the round count because their audience often believes that after being shot once you drop to the ground and die. The second shot is unnecessary, thus 15 must be a deliberate execution.
          I do however believe half a magazine in the back is going to be tough to defend.

      • From what I understand about it, he reloaded and fired a few more rounds before he got told to stop. Audio’s gone though, which is also kind of fishy.

      • jwtaylor,

        Remember, we are only justified to use lethal force to stop an attacker. This means that we can shoot our attacker as many times as necessary to stop their threat. Once the attacker is no longer a threat, we cannot continue to shoot the attacker.

        So, when is an attacker no longer a threat? If they have a knife, when they go down and no potential victims are within lunging distance, they are no longer a deadly threat and we are no longer justified to continue shooting them. If they get up with the knife, then we are justified to shoot them again.

        An attacker with a firearm is a different matter. If you shoot your attacker and they go down, they are still a deadly threat if they are able to move and still have possession of their firearm. In that case, you would be justified to continue shooting until they are no longer moving or no longer possess their firearm.

        Back to this particular case, if the policeman continued to shoot the suspect multiple times after the suspect went down, then the policeman crossed the line from righteous self-defender to executioner.

        • McDonald was ‘down’ but still in control of the knife and continuing to refuse instructions. He still presented a lethal threat to the officers. From the angle on the video you can’t see proximity of police to McDonald during second burst until the officer kicks the knife away.

        • >> McDonald was ‘down’ but still in control of the knife and continuing to refuse instructions.

          If you get shot with half a dozen bullets and were writhing in pain on the ground, do you think you personally would be coherent enough to even hear and understand the instructions, much less follow them?

  8. I think I know what they’re getting at with the things we “frankly don’t know.” Just glancing over the tape, there is a brief period where the pursuant and suspect are off screen; Van Dyke may claim the suspect was accosting his vehicle at that time, preventing him from exiting. Judging by the fact the suspect slashed another unit’s tires, this could establish that moving toward the vehicles was his strategy all along.

    There are bigger problems with the narrative; was he really moving “toward the fence?” And even if he was, are police really obliged to let him reach it when he’s slashing at police cars and running wild through the streets? This has got “totality of the circumstances” written all over it.

  10. I have nothing but contempt for the BLM crowd. OTOH, I saw the vid and it’s really ugly. I think the only thing that Attorney Herbert knows that we don’t is the size of his fee. Officer Van Dyke is going down.

    • “I have nothing but contempt for the BLM crowd. “

      I’m sorry…every time I see “BLM” I think about the Bundy case.

      I wonder if that conflation was intentional on the part of the Black Lives Matter bunch…to co-opt initials that already had an association ….

  12. Officer Vandyke has a constitutional right to bail and to post such bail so he can assist his lawyer in aggressively mounting a defense. There is some community support for Officer Vandyke and people have donated money to his bail fund, which is their right to do. Posters here ignore the community support that Officer Vandyke has and his right to bail, as if a short video told the entire story about policing in Chicago.

  13. Better question: the streets were empty … why didn’t the police simply drive their car into the suspect to take him down? Last time I checked, knives were pretty ineffective against cars.

  14. To all you cop haters out there. It was hatred like yours that got thousands of German America, Italian American, and Japanese American to lose their civil rights during World War Two.

    You claim to support civil rights. Prove it. The constitution is for every American.
    In Ferguson Missouri Michael Brown robbed a store and tried to take a policemans gun from him and then kill him with it.
    You need to wait for all the evidence to come out.

    Chicago taking a year to release the video? The white democrats who run the city are not know for supporting civil rights.

    • “It was hatred like yours that got thousands of German America, Italian American, and Japanese American to lose their civil rights during World War Two.”
      I’m having a hard time following your argument here, help me out of you would.

      • I don’t believe all cops are bad. The smear of all police by closet communist and closet facists hurts the innocent the most.
        The Germans did not attack pearl harbor the Japanese did. Even posting American flags at their homes and businesses did not save the Japanese from soldiers forcing them onto trains bound from internment camps.

        Six months after the Japanese were forced out they came from the Germans and Italians too.
        This loss of civil liberties happened because the people with power refused to help stop it. The Jewish ACLU hated Germans and believed the Japanese Americans were not so bad off compared to white European jews. The ACLU supported the progressive democrat president Roosevelt locking up tens of thousands of innocent people.

        This same hatred against all police is no different than the hatred against Germans or japanese or Italians. It is without reason and irrational.

        If you want references for the things I have told you I will be glad to give you a list.

  15. This is a clear case of suicide by cop and that would be obvious to everyone if we weren’t living in a state of mob rule.

  16. Couple of things,

    First why only the one dash cam? There were other patrol vehicles there where is the other video? And where is the audio from the dash cam and any related radio traffic. We are only getting one angle and its fairly obscured for the shooting. There is come context missing. Does Chicago have body cams yet?

    He is entitled to bail unless the state can show otherwise. The police union and its lawyers have to support him unless he is convicted. Until then he is innocent.

    Its not that police face no charges. Usually they are not indicted by a grand jury. Which is made up of citizens not police. If they find the “preponderance of the evidence” (more than half) shows he may have committed a crime, then he is indicted and it is sent to trial. But more than half the grand jury has to believe that he acted criminally and not like a “reasonable officer” in the same circumstances. It is up to the grand jury, and then a jury, not Facebook and YouTube, to indict and convict him.

    What i saw was a knife in the suspect’s hands and the officer or officers firing until he dropped the knife. Yes it kinda looked like they shot while he was on the ground, but he still had the knife.

    I’m sure what your missing is the officer or officers yelling at him to drop the knife, and it is a crappy angle not the accused officers point of view.

  19. “I think (the video shows) Officer Van Dyke steps into training mode”

    Is the police union of the city basically saying that they’re trained to respond like on this video? If so, then all the cops in Chicago collectively present imminent danger to residents of the city, and the entire department should be disbanded immediately before they kill more people.

  20. Meh. A #GovtTerrorist actually facing punishment after 1yr+ of coverup??

    Let the cunt fry. Frankly against capital punishment, seeing as how a few hundred known innocent still on deathrow are one too many, but when it comes to corrupt #GovtTerrorists??

    Once thorough due process of law has been afforded them? Makes no sense to further waste $FRN housing and feeding them costing milliona juat waiting deathrow: frankly the Nürmberg Tribunal’s swing-a-ling-a-ling sentencing final solution was the most amt of justice the legal regime of any kind that was meted out.

    Most certainly should be revisited, as an option reserved for #GovtTerrorists who go further off the res, than usual.

    xD

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