Iran Press/ America: According to a Reuters report, white police officer Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder on Friday for the 2014 shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald, touching off celebratory street demonstrations in a case that had laid bare tensions between the black community and police.
Van Dyke, 40, was also convicted of 16 counts of aggravated battery, one count for each of the shots fired. McDonald, 17, was killed while armed with a knife as he walked down the center of a street in the third-largest U.S. city.
Jurors said they faulted Van Dyke for escalating the conflict when he could have waited for more police assistance, such as an officer with a non-lethal Taser weapon.
Van Dyke sat emotionless as the verdict was read. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Vincent Gaughan immediately revoked bail and Van Dyke was escorted out of the courtroom and into Cook County Jail.
He faces up to 20 years in prison for the second-degree murder conviction and up to 30 years for each of the 16 counts of aggravated battery.
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Van Dyke conviction seemed to quell any potential unrest of the kind that has occurred in other U.S. cities in recent years when white officers have been cleared of charges in the shooting deaths of black men.
“The end of this trial brings an opportunity for the community to come together,” special prosecutor Joseph McMahon told reporters.
Police killings of mostly unarmed black men elsewhere in the United States helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement and became an issue in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Chicago had its own unrest when a police dashboard camera video was released more than a year after the shooting which occurred on the night of Oct. 20, 2014.
The video showed Van Dyke shooting McDonald as he walked down the middle of the street, veering slightly away from the officer. The aftermath led to the dismissal of the city’s police superintendent and calls for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign.
After Friday’s verdict, small, peaceful demonstrations assembled in central Chicago. About 100 people marched toward a gathering spot.
Thousands of anti-violence protesters marched along a Chicago express way Saturday, shutting down traffic.
Thousands of anti-violence protesters marched along a Chicago interstate on Saturday, shutting down traffic in an effort to draw attention to the gun violence that’s claimed hundreds of lives in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and pressure public officials to do more to stop it.
Chicago has a troubled history of police shootings. The city erupted in protest in 2015 after the release of a video showing a white police officer shoot a black 17-year-old, Laquan McDonald, 16 times a year earlier.
Chicago police said the city had 252 homicides and 1,100 shootings in the first six months of this year, a decrease from the same period last year. But those crimes have been heavily concentrated in predominantly black, low-income neighborhoods.
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