Chicago police are being accused of hiding another video tape of the police murder of a young, unarmed African-American male. Dorothy Holmes, the mother of 25-year-old Ronald Johnson, made those charges as the city continues to deal with the fallout from the release of the Laquan McDonald execution tape last week.
As part of that fallout, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Tuesday.
Johnson was shot and killed by a police officer October 2014, days before Officer Jason Van Dyke shot Laquan McDonald 16 times. Johnson’s family says the cop’s story—that Johnson was running from police and pointed a gun at them—is untrue and the dash cam footage from police vehicles will show that. An attorney for Johnson’s family filed a Freedom of Information Act request to have the video released earlier this summer. That request has not been ruled on as of yet.
Meanwhile, activists in Houston, Texas, are also seeking release of video tape in a police shooting from December 2014.
A grand jury declined to indict Houston officer Juventino Castro on December 11, 2014, in the death of 26-year old Jordan Baker.
A spokesperson for the Houston Police Department confirmed on November 30 that a video did exist. It is not known if the grand jury members knew of its existence or saw the video at the time of their deliberations.