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The city of Chicago has published a video that exhibits a police officer shooting a 17-year-old young man named Laquan McDonald 16 times.
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez claims that this video is “graphic”, “violent” and “chilling”, and it is likely to induce a very strong emotional reaction from Chicago’s very large African-American community.
Over the past few years, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray have all develop into household names because of the manner that they died, and now it seems like Laquan McDonald’s name will be added to that listing.
But the circumstances in Chicago is possibly even more unpredictable than what we observed in either Ferguson or Baltimore.
More than a million African-Americans reside in the Chicago metropolitan area, and the crime rate in the city has currently been skyrocketing.
The truth is, it is being forecasted that Chicago’s murder rate will boost by 20 percent in 2015. This is a city that is constantly dwelling on the edge of pandemonium, and at this point the video of Laquan McDonald’s death could be the straw that breaks Chicago’s back.
After everything that has developed over the past few years, the last thing that we want is another occurrence that will make racial tensions in this country even rather more serious.
Regrettably, that looks to be precisely what we are going to have. Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama ordered the city of Chicago to release the video of the death of Laquan McDonald to the public, and now the entire country is going to have to view what really occurred.
Could this be the footage that triggers the anger and frustration of the African-American community to totally boil over? The subsequent comes from CNN…
Laquan McDonald was walking down a Chicago street the night of October 20, 2014, carrying a four-inch knife and behaving erratically, authorities say.
A police officer told him to drop the knife. He didn’t listen, and the officer fired on him out of fear for his life, according to a police union spokesman.
McDonald, 17, died. He was shot 16 times.
Now, more than a year later, the public will be able to see what happened.
For African-American activists that have by now had their patience stressed to the maximum by comparable cases over the past few years, this terrible video could turn out to be the final straw. Presently, there are incredible expressions of outrage and frustration pouring in on social media websites including Facebook and Twitter.
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez specifically moved up the declaration of murder charges against the police officer that shot McDonald to November 24th in a urgent effort to defuse the response to the release of the video. But will it do the job? This subsequent excerpt comes from USA Today…
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez described the video, which shows Van Dyke unloading 16 shots on 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, as grim.
“It is graphic, it is violent, it is chilling,” Alvarez told reporters after Van Dyke appeared in court Tuesday.
Alvarez said she made her decision weeks ago to charge Van Dyke, but had delayed announcing while federal authorities completed their parallel investigation of the incident.But after a judge ordered the release of the dashcam video by Wednesday, Alvarez said it was necessary to move up her office’s timeline even as her federal counterparts continue to their investigation.
“I felt compelled in the interest of public safety to announce these state charges today, ” Alvarez said.
And obviously, this is the kind of thing that could quickly cause the city of Chicago to erupt in unheard of violence.
The truth is, Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass is presently fearing the worst…
John Kass, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, said the video “could tear Chicago apart.”
Dean Angelo, the president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, told CNN affiliate WBBM he is concerned protesters from outside the city may converge to “disrupt and cause problems.”
“This is my city. We all live here,” Angelo said. “I’m concerned about the safety of my officers. I’m concerned about the safety of the civilian population. … I think local people don’t want to see their neighborhoods damaged.”
Plus even the governor of Illinois feels quite alarmed that we could view riots. Here is a tad bit more from USA Today…
Gov. Bruce Rauner announced Tuesday that his office had been debriefed on the video and that he expected public reaction to “strong,” the Associated Press reports. The governor directed Illinois State Police to work with Chicago Police to make sure the public remains safe following the release of the video. The governor, however, declined to say whether he has deployed any additional state troopers or put the National Guard on standby.
Even at the best of times, Chicago appears to be coping with chaos. Poverty is a chronic and growing problem, the city is teetering on the brink of financial distress, and it has become a central hub for some of the biggest criminal gangs in the overall nation.
Based on a CBS News post that was posted back in 2012, there are 100,000 members of criminal gangs residing in the city of Chicago alone…
Sgt. Matt Little leads one of the teams in Chicago’s Gang Enforcement Unit.There are about 200 such officers in the city– versus 100,000 gang members.
“Almost all the violence we’re seeing now is from the gangs,” Little said. “When there’s a shooting we’ll respond to the shooting. We’ll figure out where we believe the most likely area for retaliation is and we’ll work that area trying to both prevent retaliation and possibly build a case on offenders.”
And kudos to unchecked illegal immigration, more gang members are flowing into Chicago every single day.
So if there were 100,000 three years earlier, how many are there currently?
Back in early April, I warned about the civil unrest that was coming to America, and I particularly named three cities that would be flashpoints: Baltimore, Chicago and Washington D.C.
I released this warning before any of us had ever even heard the name “Freddie Gray”, but by the end of April the city of Baltimore was similar to a war zone.
And now Chicago looks ready to drop down into pandemonium.
If you reside anywhere near Chicago, you need to get ready you and your family for what could arise after that.
At this point this video is accessible to the public, it could set off anger not like anything we have viewed up to this point, and that would not be wonderful for any of us.