Chicago police union hires police charged with killing black teen
The police union in Chicago, Illinois, says it has hired as a janitor the white officer charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of an African American teenager in 2014.
Dean Angelo, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Chicago, says the labor union hired Jason Van Dyke about three weeks ago because he was in a “very difficult situation, financially.”
Van Dyke, 38, is accused of shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014.
The shooting was captured on police dashcam video and has prompted investigations, including a federal civil rights probe of the Chicago Police Department.
Father Michael Pfleger, a priest and social activist, told Reuters that he was outraged by the hiring.
"In my mind, this is absolutely unacceptable," Pfleger said. "This is why the bridge between police and community is so destroyed now. If I hired at my church a guy who was indicted and awaiting trail for killing a police officer, they would be tearing me up."
A protest is planned by activists on Thursday in Chicago over Van Dyke’s hiring at the police union.
Van Dyke has been charged with murder, but is out on bail pending formal conviction. If convicted of first-degree murder, Van Dyke faces a prison sentence of 20 years to life imprisonment.
Prosecutors decided to charge Van Dyke because he wasn’t facing an immediate threat from McDonald, and because he continued to fire at the teen as he lay on the ground after being shot.
At least 20 citizen complaints have been filed against Van Dyke since 2001, but none resulted in disciplinary action.
According to CNN, 402 officers from the Chicago Police Department have 20 or more complaints on file in the department’s database.
Police in the United States killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans, according to data compiled by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project.
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