[Content Note: Police brutality; racism. Video autoplays at second link.]
"He wants his story to get out so that people don't see him as this coldblooded killer."—Dan Herbert, defense attorney for Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who pleaded not guilty today to murder charges for killing 17-year-old black teenager Laquan McDonald with 16 shots.
He wants his story to get out. He needs to "catapult the propaganda" that's making people see him as a coldblooded killer, like a video recording of his killing a teenager in cold blood.
It sounds like an absurd statement, unless you understand that what Herbert really means is that Officer Van Dyke wants the narratives of white supremacy and anti-blackness and victim-blaming to congeal into a defense that turns him from a remorseless actor in another vile state-sanctioned killing to a Good Cop Who Had the Misfortune of Encountering a Black Teenage Thug Who Behaved in a Way That Obliged His Death.
That's the story that needs telling. The same old fucking story. The story that continually exonerates white cops who kill black people.
[Related Reading: Protest in Chicago for Laquan McDonald, and for More.]
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