A newly released report by Chicago's inspector general names 16 police personnel involved in covering up details in the fatal shooting of teenager Laquan McDonald by officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. The formerly confidential report was publicly released Wednesday.
The report, written in 2016 by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, states that police personnel made multiple violations of conduct in how they handled the investigation into the shooting. Ferguson says these violations went as far as giving false statements "to exaggerate the threat McDonald posed" to Van Dyke the night of the shooting.
In addition, the report reveals instances in which a Chicago police lieutenant lost detective notes detailing witness statements from the shooting and later re-created them.
In the report, Ferguson writes that the actions of these police personnel served to "mischaracterize the events leading up to the McDonald shooting, and to thereby bolster a false narrative which might offer justification for the shooting."
In October 2014, Van Dyke shot McDonald, a black teen, more than a dozen times. Dashcam video from the incident showed Van Dyke shooting McDonald within seconds of arriving on the scene, as McDonald appeared to backing away from police at the time. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated battery last year. In January, he was sentenced to 81 months in prison.
This report was formerly confidential under city law, but was released under a new ordinance passed last month that calls for findings regarding death or felonies of interest to the public to be released.
Four of the police personnel named in the report were fired in June.
