Coalition seeks special prosecutor in fatal police shooting

CHICAGO -- A coalition of civil-rights attorneys and others filed a court petition Tuesday seeking to force Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to hand over the prosecution and further investigation involving the fatal police shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald to a special prosecutor.

The petition, which comes as Alvarez finds herself in a primary battle for her job largely because of this case, contends her ties to the police force and the officers' union raise serious questions about her ability and willingness to prosecute officer Jason Van Dyke and perhaps other officers.

Alvarez has defended herself against criticism from activists and others who wondered why it took more than a year to charge Van Dyke with first-degree murder, saying she handled the complicated case correctly and carefully.

Sheila Bedi, who teaches law at Northwestern University and is one of the attorneys who filed the petition, said Alvarez should be disqualified from the case because she is aligned with the police union. She said Alvarez failed to prosecute other officers despite evidence they committed crimes.

Alderman Howard Brookins Jr., who represents a predominantly African-American area of Chicago, said the entire black caucus of the city council has "no faith" in Alvarez office to handle police cases.

Illinois law dictates in an ongoing criminal case, it's the presiding judge who decides whether a special prosecutor is needed because of potential bias by a state attorney's office.

Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan is overseeing Van Dyke's case. One attorney speaking Tuesday, Locke Bowman, said activists would push for a state law establishing a permanent special prosecutor's office to handle cases that involved allegations of abuse against police.

Messages left at Alvarez's office seeking comment weren't returned. Chicago police union president Dean Angelo Sr. was not available for comment.

Van Dyke shot and killed McDonald on Oct. 20, 2014. McDonald was armed with a knife, but on video from a police-car dashcam, he seemed to be walking away from Van Dyke when the officer opened fire and shot him 16 times.

Since the video's release, McDonald's death has been a focus of the national debate over gun violence and treatment of African-Americans by the police. Protesters have turned the shooting into a rallying cry, their chants of "16 shots and a cover-up" becoming as familiar as "I can't breathe" after a video in New York showed Eric Garner being taken down by a police officer in a fatal chokehold.

The McDonald shooting triggered a flurry of federal and local investigations of Van Dyke and other officers who were at the scene and officers who investigated it. The shooting prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a civil-rights probe similar to those it conducted after police-involved deaths of other African-Americans.

Special prosecutors have been appointed in several high-profile cases in Chicago over the years.

One, former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, was asked in 2012 to look into whether then-Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley or his family members sought to impede an investigation into the 2004 death of a man punched by David Koschman, Daley's nephew. His 2014 report concluded that there wasn't proof to support that allegation. A retired judge, Stuart Nudelman, was also appointed as a special prosecutor in 2009 to review allegations of police torture going back decades ago under former Chicago police commander Jon Burge.