We need convictions

I originally wrote this as a Facebook post and brought it over to the blog after I started it in May 2019.

Prosecution and defense have rested in the trial of the three officers who are alleged to have covered up Jason Van Dyke’s killing of Laquan McDonald. As in Van Dyke’s trial, the defense has tried to make this trial about Laquan McDonald, to make him responsible for his own death, and have done so by trying to claim that the video shows McDonald assaulting Van Dyke, when everyone can see it shows no such thing. That is what the three officers on trial claimed in trying to conceal Van Dyke’s crime.

Van Dyke’s conviction was important because it showed that we can hold police accountable (at least given the condition that a video of the killing exists). Now, we need a conviction to demonstrate that the culture of police cover-ups must end…and that the current relationship between police and communities of color must be overturned.