Photo / Video Still, Democracy Now!
CHICAGO – Jason Van Dyke is out.
The ex-Chicago police officer spent only three years in prison for killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald with 16 gunshots in October 2014.
As soon as he left the Illinois prison system on February 3, hundreds of activists took to the streets and marched to the downtown federal building to demand the U.S, Justice Department bring a federal civil rights case against Van Dyke. They included William Calloway, Ja’Mal Green, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and McDonald’s grandmother, Tracie Hunter, who put it plainly: “That [prison] time that man did, it wasn’t enough.”
Even though a jury in October 2018 found Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, the trial judge who sentenced him took the sting out by handing down the lightest possible sentence for the lesser murder conviction and no sentence at all for the 16 shots. The judge gave Van Dyke 81 months and now he is back in Chicago after only 36.
The protests at the federal building created a new group of defendants called The Laquan Nine – five women and four men. Federal marshals arrested them for occupying the federal building lobby.
They are Calloway, Green, Justin Blake of Kenosha (WI), Kina Collins, Amber Leaks, Nataki Rhodes, Cassandra Greer-Ramsey and Catherine Reading.
Reading, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, told the judge: “Us in the community have been waiting more than eight years to get justice for 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and are asking for the government to intervene.”
It was William Calloway and journalist Brandon Smith who filed a motion in court that eventually led to a judge in November 2015 ordering Chicago City Hall to release the police dashcam video of the murder.
Calloway and Blake were on Democracy Now after their arrest. Calloway said the Biden DOJ should bring federal charges against Van Dyke. Calloway told Amy Goodman it is not too late to do that. “There is no statute of limitations for this federal crime because what Jason Van Dyke did resulted in the death of Laquan McDonald, for which there is no statute of limitations.”
To press that point further, Calloway launched an online petition on Change.org.
