Black Friday: Chicago demonstrators disrupt shopping in protest over teen's death

Demonstrators say the city's police force is guilty of institutionalised racism

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Demonstrators took to the streets of Chicago on Friday and disrupted one of the country’s busiest shopping days to protest the police shooting death of a black teenager.

Up to 2,000 protesters made their way to the city’s so-called “Magnificent Mile” to raise concerns not simply about the shooting of 17-year Laquan McDonald, but also about the way the city and police officials handled the aftermath of his death. The protesters chanted "Stop the cover up, 16 shots," as they marched.

Earlier this week, officer Jason Van Dyke, 37, was charged with first-degree murder for the October 2014 shooting of the teenager. Later the same day, officials finally released video footage of the incident, captured by a police vehicle’s dash cam.

Officials had initially refused to make public the footage and only did so after a court order. Emergence of the tape sparked two nights of mostly peaceful and relatively small-scale demonstrations in the city, during which nine arrests were reported by police, the Associated Press reported.

The activist and politician Jesse Jackson said Friday’s protest was aimed at drawing attention to what he considered racial bias within the city’s police department.

“This is going to give an opportunity for all of Chicago to come out, demonstrate their outrage and their anger in a nonviolent way, and interrupt the economic engine of Black Friday,” said the Rev Michael Pfleger, a Roman Catholic priest and prominent local activist.

John Curran, a vice-president of marketing for The Magnificent Mile Association, conceeded that the "protesters did take over the street for sometime today".

"In commerce terms you can think of this as a snow day. There is going to be a loss of revenue today and we plan to make that up during the rest of the holiday season," he told Reuters.

Hours before the rally, Chicago police said they made an arrest in the fatal shooting of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee. The shooting was a separate incident this month that garnered much attention because police said the boy appeared to have been killed in an act of retribution against his gang-member father.

Critics of the police department and Cook County prosecutors have questioned why it took investigators 13 months to bring charges in the case of the shooting of Laquan McDonald and to release the video. Several more videos from additional squad cars were released on Wednesday and Thursday under open-records requests by the media.

African-American members of the City Council have repeatedly called for the resignation of city Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

In a statement on Thursday endorsing the planned Unity March & Rally in Memory of Laquan McDonald, the Chicago Teachers Union also called for Cook County's chief prosecutor, Anita Alvarez, to step down as well.

“We have watched in anger and disappointment as the city has covered up police violence,” said teachers union Vice President Jesse Sharkey.