On October 20, 2014 a Chicago police officer fired his gun 16 times into 17-year old Laquan McDonald, killing him (no weapons were found on McDonald). Jay Darshane, a Burger King district manager, says that later that evening four or five police officers came into a nearby Burger King restaurant and asked to see the footage from a security camera. When they left, 86 minutes of the recording had been erased.
“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 missing video, all sides agree, would not have shown the actual shooting but attorney’s 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 [McDonald family attorney] Jeff Neslund.
Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority acknowledges that the 86 minutes are missing but a spokesman for the Independent Police Review Authority said: “We have no credible evidence at this time that would cause us to believe the Chicago Police Department purged or erased any surveillance video.” (The Independent Police Review Authority is a joke, according to Locke Bowman, director of the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center.)
Image: Photo collage based on image from Anthony92931 CC BY-SA 3.0
