One year ago, a Chicago Police Department officer by the name of Jason VanDyke shot and killed an unarmed 17-year-old African-American boy named Laquan McDonald a total of 16 times.
The CPD officer was charged with murder late last month, an entire year after the shooting took place.
Just nine days after the shooting, the city collected all evidence including a dash cam video and turned it over to the prosecutors.
So why did it take so long for the video to be released?
Protests to have CPD Superintendent Garry McCarthy fired dominated the news on Black Friday.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked McCarthy to resign almost immediately.
This situation is something that should’ve never happened.
Unfortunately, it did; and it took an unreasonable amount of time for anyone outside of the situation to find out about it.
The general public had no clue about this fatal shooting until a video of the event was released in November.
The video shows McDonald walking away from officers when he was unreasonably shot and killed. The officer continued to shoot even after the teen no longer showed signs of life.
A video showing such a brutal and horrific event should have been released to the public much sooner.
Many Chicago citizens never would have imagined an event like this happening in a town where a police officer has never been charged with murder.
On the plus side, this situation has caused the CPD to finally be investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The department has an extensive history of problematic behavior that hasn’t been properly addressed.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she hopes a federal investigation will improve the system.
The shooting shed light on something bigger than expected.
An investigation on the CPD was long overdue and hopefully it will be the first step in the right direction.
The amount of good that came out of this incident was tremendous, but there’s so much more to be taken care of.
This is great, but it’s not enough.