Cool USA Facts!

On October 20th, 2014, 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot and killed by police in Chicago. The police at first claimed he was behaving erratically with a knife, and shot him 16 times. The initial police portrayals of the incident, consisting of about 400 pages of typed and handwritten reports, prompted police supervisors to rule the case a justifiable homicide and within the bounds of the department's use of force guidelines. Dashcam footage released a year later (after the police denied 15 previous requests) showed that he was walking away from police when shot. There was also a security camera at a nearby Burger King restaurant that may have captured the shooting, but during the time of the shooting there is a gap of 86 minutes in the recording. The officer was found guilty of second degree murder, and a $5M settlement was awarded to his family, however a USDOJ report released in January of 2017, described police as having a culture of "excessive violence," especially against minority suspects. Three Chicago police officers tried for allegedly attempting to cover up events related to the shooting were found not guilty by the Cook County Circuit Court on January 17, 2019.