If this is true then it’s clear evidence that cops were destroying evidence in the death of Laquan McDonald, who had been brandishing a knife and was shot down by cops.
Watch below:
Burger King came out publicly and stated that Chicago Police deleted their footage on the murder of #LaquanMcDonald pic.twitter.com/VFA3unJWps
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) November 24, 2015
More from NBC Chicago:
Just south of the restaurant, McDonald, who was armed with a knife, was shot after police on the scene said he posed a “very serious threat” to the officer’s safety. But that claim is disputed by attorneys for McDonald’s family and by some eyewitnesses that night.
“One witness, this witness told us this was an execution. That’s his word,” said attorney Jeff Neslund, who along with Michael Robbins, represents McDonald’s family.
After the shooting, according to Jay Darshane, the District Manager for Burger King, four to five police officers wearing blue and white shirts entered the restaurant and asked to view the video and were given the password to the equipment. Three hours later they left, he said.
The next day, when an investigator from the Independent Police Review Authority asked to view the security footage, it was discovered that 86 minutes of the video were missing.
In a statement, a spokesman for the IPRA said: “We have no credible evidence at this time that would cause us to believe CPD purged or erased any surveillance video.”
But according to Darshane, both the cameras and video recorder were all on and working properly the night of the shooting.
“We had no idea they were going to sit there and delete files,” Darshane said. “I mean we were just trying to help the police officers.”
“The video by nature is two dimensional so the problem is it distorts distances, and distances and depth perception are important,” he said. “The most critical problem is that the video does not depict what my client was seeing. It is not a video from the eyes of my client.”
The missing video, all sides agree, would not have shown the actual shooting but attorneys for McDonald’s family contend it could have shown events leading up to the shooting.
“Our first time down at the Burger King restaurant when we started talking to employees, watching the Burger King video, when we realized video had been deleted, or is missing, absolutely we knew something was up,” said Jeff Neslund.
While the video from the Burger King is missing, the shooting of McDonald was captured on a police dashboard camera. That video is expected to be made public this week, and is said to be “violent and graphic.”
It is important to note that it would not have the actual shooting, but why would the cops just delete it? It’s lookin’ bad for the Chicago cops.
Protests in Chicago are already beginning tonight over the release of the dashcam video showing the death of the teen.