Simply Murder
By 
In this kind of case, there can never really be justice, but the outcome is certainly preferable to the alternative:
A white Chicago policeman who killed a black teenager was charged with murder on Tuesday, hours before authorities released a long-awaited video that shows the youth walking away from officers as he is shot 16 times.
The graphic footage of last year’s shooting, taken from a camera mounted on the dashboard of a police car and made public under orders from a judge, sparked mostly peaceful street demonstrations in Chicago on Tuesday.
The clip showed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who authorities said was carrying a pocket knife and had the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his system, as he was gunned down in the middle of a street on Oct. 20, 2014.
McDonald is seen jogging away from patrol vehicles pursuing him from behind, and then veering off diagonally at a walk as two more officers pull up in a squad car ahead of him.
Two policemen are shown jumping out of their vehicle in the center of the road, and drawing their weapons while advancing toward McDonald, who continues to move away. Within seconds he is struck by bullets, spins and crumples to the ground, his body jerking as he is hit by additional rounds of gunfire.
Cook County’s chief prosecutor, Anita Alvarez, acknowledged that she timed the filing of the first-degree murder charge against officer Jason Van Dyke to precede the video’s disclosure in a bid to mute harsh public reaction to the footage.
Dashboard and body cameras are no panacea, of course. Some illegal use of force by police will escape their view. Sometimes, what they record will leave enough ambiguity to allow prosecutors and/or juries to rationalize the illegal actions of police. But sometimes the evidence will lead to a prosecution that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and more importantly may prevent some unjustified uses of force from happening.