BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

Second of Two Parts

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, TUESDAY JULY 12, 2016) — Nearly two years ago, police in Ferguson, MO, shot and killed Michael Brown. To explain this act, social activists created a metaphor that morphed into a national storyline, namely, that police departments across the nation are randomly and wantonly shooting and killing racial minorities, particularly blacks, for no reason. It’s a conceit author Heather McDonald calls “The Ferguson Effect.”

This article by McDonald was published in The New York Post on July 9. McDonald is the author of War on Cops (Encounter Books). The piece is adapted from Summer City Journal. Part Two continues from yesterday. THE PLANET presents it to advance discussion of this timely and important issue.

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BY HEATHER McDONALD

SPECIAL TO PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

Two officers found 17-year-old Laquan McDonald a block away; he punctured a tire on their squad car and struck its windshield with his 3-inch blade. The cops trailed McDonald, who was high on PCP, for nearly a half-mile while waiting for backup units with a Taser. Two additional patrol cars pulled up as McDonald strode along the middle of Pulaski Road, energetically swinging his right arm, knife in hand. One car parked behind him; its dashboard camera recorded the subsequent events. The other car stopped about 30 yards ahead.

The officers in that forward vehicle jumped out, guns pointed at McDonald, commanding him to drop the knife. Less than 10 seconds after exiting, Officer Jason Van Dyke began shooting.

The shooting, pitiable to watch, represented a catastrophic failure of tactics and judgment.

And what followed the homicide was almost as shocking. Five officers at the scene all told variants of the same tale in their written reports: that McDonald had been advancing toward Van Dyke, aggressively raising his knife as if to attack. None of those claims is borne out by the video.

Still, a police-union spokesman at the scene of the killing told reporters that McDonald had been threatening Van Dyke. The police department press release a few hours later essentially echoed that account, stating that McDonald continued to approach the officers after being warned.

Superintendent McCarthy viewed the video the next day, without retracting the department’s press release, explaining later that he was too busy trying to learn what had happened. From then on out, officials made no effort to countermand the McDonald attack narrative.

McCarthy immediately stripped Van Dyke of his police powers and forwarded the case to the civilian board that reviews police shootings, the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA).

The case also went to the Cook County state attorney’s office, the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI.

In April, the mayor’s corporation counsel, Stephen Patton, attained city council approval for a $5 million settlement with the McDonald family, conditioned on the continued non-release of the video.

Later that month, the detectives’ bureau cleared and closed the case, astoundingly concluding that the “recovered in-car camera video was . . . consistent with the accounts of the witnesses” and that “Van Dyke’s use of deadly force was within bounds of CPD guidelines.”

By then, the Chicago press was clamoring for the video’s release, but it was not until Nov. 24, 2015, that the video came out, under a judge’s order. The reaction was understandably explosive; weeks of angry protests denouncing alleged police racism and brutality followed.

The Cook County state attorney announced first-degree murder charges against Officer Van Dyke on the day that the McDonald video was released.

Mayor Emanuel fired McCarthy a week later and appointed the Police Accountability Task Force, dominated by critics of the police.

That task force issued a report in April 2016, claiming that the Chicago Police Department is shot through with “racism.”

Emanuel is now genuflecting to the city’s activists. He has adopted many of the report’s most sweeping recommendations, including the appointment of a costly and unnecessary inspector general for the department (that will come on top of the independent monitor for investigatory stops), the replacement of the IPRA with a new entity, the Civilian Police Investigative Agency, and the creation of the Community Safety Oversight Board. All these additional layers of oversight will only complicate chains of command and further discourage proactive policing.

Allowing a fabrication about a very bad shooting to stand, especially during the current era of fevered antipolice sentiment, is guaranteed to amplify the demagoguery against the police.

Emanuel has praised himself for being the first Chicago mayor to acknowledge an alleged police code of silence, but he knew about the shooting, and his aides had seen the video early on. It is irresponsible for Emanuel to scapegoat McCarthy when his own administration also failed to set the record straight.

Allowing a fabrication about a very bad shooting to stand, especially during the current era of fevered antipolice sentiment, is guaranteed to amplify the demagoguery against the police.

The damage to the Chicago police and to policing nationally from the mishandling of the McDonald homicide is incalculable. The episode can now be invoked to confirm every false generalization about the police peddled by the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet the shooting was a tragic aberration, not the norm.

The vast majority of officers today observe the law and are dedicated to serving the community; what they need is more tactical training, adequate staffing and equipment and better leadership from an ingrown, highly political management cadre. As for the alleged blue wall, or code, of silence, it is hard in any department to crack the defensive solidarity among officers, who feel that they are facing an uncomprehending and often hostile world.

Even now, a few of the officers I spoke with will not pass judgment on the McDonald homicide, on the grounds that they were not there. Such solidarity is understandable, but commanders need to stress that when it results in distorting the truth, not only will the officer be severely punished; he is also making today’s anti-cop environment all the worse.

Heather Mac Donald is the author of the just released “War on Cops” (Encounter Books). This piece has been adapted from Summer City Journal.

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