CHICAGO — 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 — an early release that was widely viewed as a setback in the city’s efforts to improve relations between its police department and Black community.
Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, said Van Dyke was released Thursday morning, though she declined to provide further details, including where he had been imprisoned.
Van Dyke, who is white, became the first Chicago officer in about half a century to be convicted of murder for an on-duty killing in 2018, and many Black leaders hoped his conviction for second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery signaled a willingness to hold officers accountable. But they say word that he would be freed after serving about three years and four months of his sentence of six years and nine months has turned McDonald and them into victims again.
“This is the ultimate illustration that Black lives don’t matter as much as other lives,” said the Rev. Marshall Hatch, a prominent minister on the city’s West Side. “To get that short amount of time for a murder sends a bad message to the community.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot made a similar point.
“I understand why this continues to feel like a miscarriage of justice, especially when many Black and brown men get sentenced to so much more prison time for having committed far lesser crimes,” she said in a statement Thursday.
To give the teen and the community the justice it hoped it had with Van Dyke’s conviction, the NAACP this week asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring federal civil rights charges against Van Dyke. McDonald’s grandmother, Tracie Hunter, has asked for the same thing.
It’s also unknown if Van Dyke might face federal charges. But what’s clear is that his release comes at a perilous time for the city and…