CHICAGO — The shooting of Laquan McDonald triggered a momentous police reform effort that spawned a scathing Justice Department report and an extensive consent decree and for the first time added community members directly into Chicago police oversight.
But more than seven years later, the pace of reforms remains slow, stymied by a resistant department, an antagonistic police union and leadership that has fielded criticism for checking boxes rather than pursuing meaningful reform, critics say — all while the city is still notoriously violent and still seeing police misconduct cases.
McDonald’s killer, former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, was tried and convicted and has nearly finished serving his sentence. But as the city awaits his release from prison Thursday, it reckons with a police department that while changed in some ways, is struggling with many of the same problems that contributed to the teen’s 2014 killing and the response to it.
