Last week, Chicago prosecutors charged police officer Jason Van Dyke with the 2014 murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, the first such charge for an officer in the city in more than three decades. The video of the incident, in which Van Dyke shoots McDonald 16 times, was released by Chicago authorities shortly after Van Dyke’s indictment and sparked protests throughout the city. At the time, reports emerged alleging that police erased additional footage of the incident from a local Burger King. New revelations from employees of that Burger King support those reports and cast doubts on statements to the contrary by Chicago officials. According to the Chicago Tribune:
Minutes after McDonald was shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke on a Southwest Side street, several police officers entered a Burger King located just yards from where the teen fell, demanding to view the restaurant's password-protected surveillance video, Jay Darshane, a district manager for the fast-food chain, told the Tribune this week.
When the police left the restaurant almost two hours later, the video had an inexplicable 86-minute gap that included when McDonald was shot, according to Darshane.
"I was just trying to help the police with their investigation," Darshane said. "I didn't know they were going to delete it."
Darshane revealed to the Tribune for the first time that he testified about the missing footage before a federal grand jury earlier this year.
A technology support employee for Burger King who tried unsuccessfully to recover the video also appeared before the grand jury, he said.
In addition, the FBI hauled away the restaurant's digital video recorder containing all its surveillance images, according to Darshane, who oversees several area Burger Kings.
While State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy both dispute the claim that footage from the Burger King was altered, the testimony from Darshane clouds the picture of the police role in McDonald’s shooting and the subsequent investigation. At the very least, the 86-minute gap around the time of the shooting could have been instrumental in Van Dyke’s upcoming trial, and in public assessment of the department and county’s decision-making in the months leading to the video’s release.