Former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke left prison on Thursday after serving less than half of his nearly seven-year sentence for killing Black teenager Laquan McDonald,…
(Newser) – Former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke left prison on Thursday after serving less than half of his nearly seven-year sentence for killing Black teenager Laquan McDonald, angering community leaders who feel the white officer’s punishment didn’t fit his crime. Van Dyke was released at 12:15am from the Taylorville Correctional Center in central Illinois, a corrections official said. The conditions of his parole and what Van Dyke plans to do next weren’t immediately known, the AP reports. Van Dyke in 2018 became the first Chicago officer in about a half-century to be convicted of murder for an on-duty killing—after shooting McDonald 16 times—and many Black leaders hoped his conviction for second-degree murder and aggravated battery signaled a new era of police accountability and of the department’s treatment of the city’s Black residents.
