Following Rahm Emanuel’s fumbling around the fatal shooting of LaQuan McDonald by Chicago police in 2014 and the year it took to release the incident’s footage, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez says everything was handled just fine.
Protestors have been calling for Alvarez’s resignation, but, according to Think Progress, Alvarez doubled down on her shaky position during an election debate on Thursday.
“I don’t believe any mistakes were made,” she said during a debate with the two other women, Donna More and Kim Foxx, who are vying for her office. “When I saw the case, I enlisted the FBI and United States attorney because I knew that this is a case we wanted to make sure we got it right.”
However, that isn’t quite true. CPD claimed McDonald “lunged” at them, despite dash cam footage showing he did not, and they have not been prosecuted for lying about this. On the mayor’s end, his team knew about the footage of McDonald’s death in 2014; but, instead of releasing it when Emanuel was up for re-election, they offered to pay off McDonald’s family to keep the video quiet. Emanuel’s staff also worked with the Independent Police Review Authority on publicity strategies to handle public outrage from the video, rather than charging Officer Jason Van Dyke in the fatal shooting of a Chicago resident. Van Dyke was finally charged with first-degree murder and misconduct in December 2015. Anita, girl, how was everything handled just fine?