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The First Butcher of Yaounde Seeking Seventh Term
A large poster of President Paul Biya hangs like a street sign in Cameroon’s western city of Bafoussam.
“The force of experience,” reads the poster in reference to President Biya’s 36 years in power, to which he now hopes to add another seven-year term.
A couple of metres from the poster, members of Mr Biya’s governing CPDM party are meeting to drum up support for the person they call their hero.
“Young people may be eloquent. They may make big promises, but none of them can have the steady hands to run a large country like Cameroon,” says party supporter Emmanuel Ndam, 58.
“For over 30 years, our president has been tested by various crises, and each time, he has been able to overcome,” Mr Ndam adds.
“Just look at the mature way he handled the Bakassi crisis with Nigeria. Some hot-headed youth could just have messed up the situation,” he adds, before making his way into the meeting hall.
His comrade Alice Meye, 22, agrees. She says only President Biya has the wherewithal to resolve Cameroon’s myriad crises, most urgent of which is the unrest in the country’s two English-speaking regions.
“We have a president who does what he promises to do. He has said he will solve the problems of our Anglophone brothers. Let’s give him a chance.”
“Even in death, President Paul Biya will continue to reign,” she said.
‘The old man is tired’
But not everyone believes Mr Biya, Africa’s second-longest serving leader, still has the charisma and the physical stamina to stay at the helm.
Picking out specks of beef from his teeth with a wooden pick, Ibrahima Sadiki, a resident of the capital Yaoundé’s swampy Briqueterie slum tells the BBC “the old man is tired”.
“This is a man who should normally stay quietly in the village, playing with his grandchildren.”
Arguments about the president’s age, however, pale in comparison to the numerous problems Cameroon faces today.
A separatist uprising in the country’s two Anglophone regions – the North-West and South-West – is stretching Cameroon’s much-hyped unity to the limits.
In October 2016, teachers and lawyers in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions took to the streets to protest at the imposition of French in schools and courts.
But those protests soon took a political dimension, with thousands of English speakers taking to the streets on 1 October last year to declare the independence of a new country they called “Ambazonia”.
The government cracked down in response. Hundreds of people have been killed – at least 420 civilians, 175 military and police officers, and an unknown numberof separatist fighters.
More than 300,000 people have also been forced to flee their homes, according to the International Crisis Group.
In addition, the economy of the region has been devastated.
The Cameroon Development Corporation – the second-largest employer after the state – has lost 50% of its production, according to its Director General Frankline Njie.
According to the IMF, Cameroon has lost more than 24 billion CFA francs ($42m; £32m) in 2018 alone as a result of the crisis.
Mr Biya’s repeated absences from the country have further riled his critics – the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) estimates that the president spent nearly 60 days out of the country last year on private visits.
Colonial roots – Cameroon’s ongoing divisions:
- Colonised by Germany in 1884
- British and French troops force Germans to leave in 1916
- Cameroon is split three years later – 80% goes to the French and 20% to the British
- French-run Cameroon becomes independent in 1960
- Following a referendum, the (British) Southern Cameroons join Cameroon, while Northern Cameroons join English-speaking Nigeria
- In 1972, another public vote sees Cameroon dropping its federal form to become a unitary state
- Ever since, many Anglophones have complained that their regions were being neglected and excluded from power
- Today, some militia groups and separatists want an independent state
- Others want a return to the federal system of two states – one English-speaking, the other French-speaking
The fighting has left a trail of destruction and death. In May on a visit to the country’s North-West region, I came face-to-face with the stark reality.
Approaching the regional capital of Bamenda, you have to go through rigorous security controls.
At Santa, a locality that borders the country’s French-speaking West Region, a gun-toting mix of soldiers and police officers tell every passenger to step out of their buses, ID cards in hand.
The next 500 metres or so must be travelled on foot. No chances are taken, because an “Amba boy” (separatist fighter) could be hidden among the passengers.
But as you get out of town and into the villages, there is a sense that the government has lost control.
The armed separatists have vowed to enforce a boycott of the 7 October election, raising fears of attacks on polling stations and a low turn-out in the mainly Anglophone areas.
Control posts are now manned by rag-tag Ambazonia fighters. I came across one such post at Bambalang, some 20km (12 miles) from Bamenda.
“Where is your voter card?” one of them asked me, waving a machete. I didn’t have one because I’d been advised not to carry it on me, lest it be destroyed.
The “Amba Boys” have been confiscating voters’ cards and destroying them.
Voter intimidation
The authorities have taken seriously the separatists’ threat to disrupt the poll.
According to the head of Cameroon’s electoral body Elecam, Erik Essousse, the number of polling stations has been reduced in the north West and South West Regions and others moved from turbulent zones to more secure areas.
But the move has been criticised by the main opposition Social Democratic Front, which says it could disenfranchise voters unable to travel longer distances to the new polling centres.
Despite the uncertainties, the campaign is gaining steam and creating suspense.
“It’s over for Paul Biya,” a supporter of the CRM party’s Maurice Kamto tells the BBC, who then joins thousands of people in a chorus singing “Goodbye Paul Biya, Kamto is coming.”
The sense of optimism is also expressed by Seralphine Neh, 22, who supports the election’s youngest candidate, Cabral Libii.
She sees the 38-year-old career journalist as the embodiment of a new kind of politics – one that is shifting the focus from “a system of gerontocracy, to that of inclusion where the youth feel involved”.
But President Biya’s supporters do not see things that way.
Tatiana Nzana who sells CPDM gadgets in Yaoundé tells the BBC: “We want someone with experience, with wisdom. We don’t want ping-pong players.
“That’s why we will continue to vote for him. Better the devil you know than the angel you don’t know. Even after his death, he will still be president.”
In total, there are nine candidates in Cameroon’s presidential elections. Parliamentary and municipal elections, meanwhile, have been postponed to October 2019 after the presidency and lawmakers cited organisational difficulty
President Biya himself has organised only one rally, in the country’s North Region, where he praised the people for their resilience in the face of Boko Haram attacks.
Security forces have been accused of using excessive force in their attempts to deal with both the Boko Haram insurgency to the north, and the Anglophone crisis to the west.
A BBC investigation into a horrifying viral video which shows Cameroonian soldiers leading away and killing two women and two young children in northern Cameroon was initially dismissed by the government as “fake news”.
But Cameroon’s government has since admitted that it has detained seven soldiers in connection with the killings.
Speaking at his campaign rally in Maroua, President Biya blamed separatists for the Anglophone crisis but seemed to acknowledge their grievances, saying:
“Evidently, we still have to restore peace in our two regions of the North-West and the South-West, overburdened by secessionist exactions”.
Mr Biya spoke of the need to satisfy the “just demands” of the country’s English-speakers in order to demonstrate to them that their future lies in an undivided Cameroon.
He had planned a similar rally in the restive South-West region, but suddenly called it off without further explanation. Observers have said he was wary of the separatist threat.
Joshua Osih, a first-time candidate for the main opposition SDF party, has said he could resolve the problem within 100 days in office. He has made the radical proposal of a return to a federal structure of government.
But it is not only the Anglophone crisis plaguing Cameroon.
The Central African nation also suffers from a crisis of governance, illustrated by its undesirable position in 1998 and 1999 as the world’s most corrupt nation, in Transparency international’s rankings.
One of the presidential challengers, Akere Muna – himself a former executive with the anti-graft body – has pledged, if elected, to focus on the fight against the scourge.
“Cameroon loses 40% of its revenue in corrupt practices. We have too many structures in the fight against corruption,” Mr Muna has said.
“We are going to have one department – consolidated, that will do prevention, investigation, sanctioning, and prosecution and that will also be in charge of the recovery of assets.”
Despite the new faces and the unprecedented challenges, few expect 85-year-old Paul Biya to be rattled in the face of a splintered opposition.
Culled from BBC
Biya regime closes borders ahead of presidential polls
Cameroon national borders will be closed ahead of the presidential polling day on Sunday, the country’s minister of territorial administration Paul Atanga Nji said on Friday.
“National borders shall be closed 48 hours to polling day. They will be reopened the following day after voting.” Nji told a press conference in the capital Yaounde.
The authorities announced the measure as the election is taking place in a context of growing tension in the Anglophone regions where separatists are fighting to create a new nation called “Ambazonia”.
Armed separatist forces have vowed they will disrupt voting in the regions.
Nji also said that the circulation of goods and persons within the territory by road, railway, and airlines is banned as from 6 pm October 6 to 6 pm October 7, adding that assembly of persons in front of polling centers are also banned.
Over 6,500,000 registered voters are expected to vote during Sunday’s presidential race, according to the Cameroonian electoral body, Elections Cameroon.
The outgoing president Paul Biya, leader of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, is seeking to extend his 36 years in office by winning a new seven-year mandate.
Source: Xinhuanet
October 7: ‘Massive fraud’ planned for polls
An opposition contender who will seek election in Cameroon’s impending presidential polls alleged on Friday that a “massive fraud” is underway to ensure the sitting president wins a seventh term.
Maurice Kamto’s campaign chief Paul-Eric Kingue said that efforts to rig Sunday’s ballot “had the blessing” of the Elecam electoral commission.
“We won’t accept any result if this kind of fraud continues,” he said at a media briefing by Kamto’s Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) party in the capital Yaounde. Kingue called on party supporters to “fiercely resist” rigging.
The MRC has alleged that polling cards have been forged and that voter registration has been allowed to continue despite the process being officially closed. “In 62% of areas, the (ruling) Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement party is still adding names to the voter roll,” said Kingue.
“But this year, 2018, will not be like 2011,” he vowed.
In the most recent presidential elections in that year, President Paul Biya won a sixth term in office with 78% of votes in polls the opposition and observers accused of being flawed. “We’re not preparing for war, but wherever there is fraud, there will be a firm response,” said Kingue.
Rumours have emerged in recent days of a possible coalition between opposition presidential contenders. Kamto’s campaign director confirmed that “talks were underway” with rival opposition hopeful Akere Muna – but Kingue was unable to confirm if a deal had been struck.
Biya, 85, has been in power for 35 years and will face-off against eight opposition contenders. The front-runners are Joshua Osih, Maurice Kamto and Akera Muna.
AFP
Southern Cameroonians boycott Cameroun election as violence worsens
Many Cameroonians face being unable to vote in the country’s election on Sunday because of insecurity and fear driven by worsening violence in its anglophone regions.
Paul Biya, the 85-year-old who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, looks set to capitalise on a divided opposition to easily win his fifth election since reluctantly adopting a multiparty system in 1992.
Separatists in the English-speaking regions have announced a boycott of the poll, and many voters there have said they are too scared to go to the polls. At least 400 civilians have been killed in unrest in the past year, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
“Who can vote when our brothers are dying? How can we even vote, when you don’t know how safe it will be?” asked Chimene Ngum, a 23-year-old student in Bamenda, capital of the anglophone Northwest region.
The rebellion that erupted in the country’s two anglophone regions was triggered by the violent repression of a peaceful protest a year ago, after lawyers complained that magistrates were being appointed to their courts despite their poor English. It spread to the regions’ teachers and students, then activists symbolically declared the two anglophone regions the independent republic of Ambazonia.
Biya’s government responded with a wave of arrests and killings.
For years, anglophones have felt deliberately sidelined and neglected, their infrastructure left to crumble. Last year, for instance, Biya’s home region was allocated almost twice the money that the anglophone regions got combined, the public investment budget shows, despite their vital importance to Cameroon’s economy. Much of the country’s oil production is off the coast of the Southwest region, and onshore are its biggest cocoa-growing areas.
Biya was due to visit Buea, the Southwest regional capital, on Wednesday for a rally, but called off his trip at the last minute after the “Amba boys”, as the forces of the Ambazonian separatists are known, issued more threats. It would have been the first trip he has made to the anglophone regions since 2014, in which time he has spent at least 260 days on private trips abroad, many to Geneva.
Teachers who were bussed into a heavily securitised Buea to participate in the ruling party’s rally said they were threatened that there would be consequences if they did not attend. Meanwhile, gunfights broke out between Ambazonian and Cameroonian forces in villages near the city.
It is unclear how many of the 4000 polling stations due to open in the anglophone regions will function on Sunday, though some are determined to cast their ballots.
“I am going to the polls this Sunday, despite the fact that our brothers don’t want us to. They should understand that this is the only way we can get the change we want,” said Judith Mafor, a supporter of the main opposition party. “We have tried with guns and this has taken us to the graves and to the bushes.”
Others said they would not risk voting and described feeling powerless.
“We vote all the time and the outcome remains the same,” said Josephine Ngum, a tailor from Bamenda. “Why do I have to vote again? In a country where real democracy is instituted, when someone’s term of office is over, he steps down for another person to take over. This is not the case with Cameroon.”
Chimene Ngum said she didn’t even have a voter’s card. “Even if I had one, I wouldn’t vote because the results would still be the same. Paul Biya always wins,” she said.
After Robert Mugabe’s fall from power last year, Biya took up the mantle of being Africa’s oldest president, making Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, 74, and Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari, 75, seem young.
Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang, 76, currently holds the title for the longest-serving president in Africa, having ousted his uncle in a military coup in 1979. Biya, who rules his cocoa and oil-producing country essentially by decree, is second.
Culled from The Guardian
Biya’s Continued Stay in Power: Drama begins as ELECAM rejects Muna’s withdrawal, Matomba denies coalition
Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, the organizing body for the October 7 presidential elections has officially rejected the stepping down of a key candidate, Akere Muna.
Muna, one of nine candidates announced a coalition with a former minister, Maurice Kamto, late Friday. But ELECAM through a press release with hours to the vote said it rejects the move.
Muna had written to the body to officially retract his candidature but ELECAM said it was impossible to admit Muna’s request because it had no basis in law, much less with just hours to the opening of polls.
Opposition coalition shrinks after ‘growth?”
Meanwhile news that the opposition coalition in Cameroon had grown to three has since been denied by Serge Espoir Matomba, leader of the PURS. Reports suggested that he had backed the Kamto-Muna alliance.
News of his decision to step down in support of former minister Maurice Kamto had been expected through the better part of Saturday but in a Facebook LIVE posted in the evening, he denied any such alliance.
Twenty-four hours prior, Akere Muna had announced that his party hand entered an alliance with Kamto with the view of presenting a united front. The current development means that even though nine candidates are on the ballot, there are seven aspirants to choose from.
Incumbent Paul Biya is facing a stiff challenge to his over three-decades in charge. The coalition has come late in the day but some political watchers say it could prove crucial.
Source: Africa News
Southern Cameroons War: Ambazonia records over 246,000 displaced in 2017
Political and social instability aggravated by sporadic violence by security forces and pro-independence fighters have had a negative impact on the civilian population of Cameroon’s South-West and North West Regions.
The South-West Region has become the hub of the crisis as dozens of villages in Mbongue and Konye Subdivision (Meme Division) have been nearly emptied of their populations.
According to a recent statement by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, 400 people have been killed while more than 246,000 people have been displaced in the South-West region.
The majority of the displaced families have found refuge in the forest and are constantly moving to escape clashes between armed groups and security forces. So far, more than 21,000 Cameroonians have also been registered as refugees in Nigeria.
The release also indicates that there is growing evidence that security forces are committing systematic and widespread attacks on civilians, amounting to possible crimes against humanity.
Various civil society organizations have documented extrajudicial killings, torture, and the burning of homes and property in Anglophone villages.
It however called on the AU and UN Security Council to urge the government and security forces to adhere to international humanitarian and human rights law.
Since late 2016 English-speaking activists in Cameroon’s North-West and South-West regions have been protesting their alleged marginalization and neglect by the Francophone-dominated government.
In October 2017 Anglophone separatists declared the independent state of “Ambazonia,” resulting in a rapidly escalating armed conflict between government security forces and separatist groups.
Source: Africa News
Biya’s Continued Stay in Power: Opposition coalition grows with hours to key vote
The opposition coalition in Cameroon has grown with barely hours to the opening of vote across the central African country. The latest to join the two-party coalition is Serge Espoir Matomba, leader of the PURS.
News of his decision to step down in support of former minister Maurice Kamto had been expected through the better part of Saturday but was firmed up in the evening.
Twenty-four hours prior, Akere Muna had announced that his party hand entered an alliance with Kamto with the view of presenting a united front. The current development means that even though nine candidates are on the ballot, there are six aspirants to choose from.
Incumbent Paul Biya is facing a stiff challenge to his over three-decades in charge. The coalition has come late in the day but some political watchers say it could prove crucial.
Source: Africa News
Tactics and tension ahead of Cameroon poll
Cameroon will go to the polls this weekend as opposition parties mount an eleventh-hour unity bid to dislodge six-term President Paul Biya while the country faces unprecedented insecurity.
Two leading opponents of the 85-year-old incumbent have combined forces while talks among the remaining field of seven opposition candidates about a “super coalition”, as happened in 1992, were understood to be ongoing on Saturday.
Cameroon’s 6.5 million eligible voters will cast their ballots on Sunday to a backdrop of ongoing violence and tensions in the country’s English-speaking southwest and northwest, which have been rocked by an anglophone insurgency launched a year ago in the mainly francophone country.
The violence has claimed the lives of at least 420 civilians, 175 members of the security forces and an unknown number of separatists, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank.
In Kumba, a village in the southwest, one civilian, one police officer and one suspected separatist were killed in the last week alone. The far north region also continues to be mired in insecurity, as fighters of the Nigeria-based Boko Haram group mount cross-border raids and attacks despite a military surge to drive out the jihadists.
– ‘Not preparing for war’ –
In a rare coordinated political manoeuvre, one of the key opposition frontrunners, Maurice Kamto, agreed late Friday to a unity deal between his Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon’s (MRC) and the People’s Development Front (FDP), meaning he will stand on behalf of both parties.
The FDP leader Akere Muna has called on his supporters to back Kamto, in the first such tactical pre-election tie-up since John Fru Ndi stood as the sole opposition candidate in 1992 in polls that his supporters say he won, but were manipulated to hand victory to Biya.
But it is unclear whether the eleventh hour deal was done in time to affect the vote, which runs from 0700 GMT until 1700 GMT Sunday. “This alliance, though interesting for the vitality of Cameroonian democracy, may have arrived too late,” said Hans de Marie Heungoup, an ICG researcher.
Kamto’s MRC has warned that a “massive fraud” was underway to secure a Biya win in the vote. “We’re not preparing for war, but wherever there is fraud, there will be a firm response,” said MRC spokesman Paul-Eric Kingue.
But the government hit back, apparently in response to the MRC, saying that it would “not tolerate any disorder before, during or after the presidential vote”. Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a statement that “measures have been taken… to prevent any actions that might create violence or disorder around the elections”.
He added that “political figures linked to foreign interests were preparing groups of agitators to stir-up violence in the event that the results don’t go their way”.
– Election uncertainty –
It is unclear if polling will proceed normally across Cameroon’s English-speaking region where separatists hold a “significant” amount of territory, according to the ICG, and have threatened to disrupt the vote.
“I tell people: after the election, things will be OK,” said John Ngomba, a tour guide in the town of Buea, the capital of the southwest region which has been at the heart of the fighting and is rocked by near daily clashes.
A burnt-out lorry and car, allegedly targets of a recent separatist arson attack, sit in a ditch opposite a market, with charred, twisted metal spilling onto Buea’s main road, a testament to the ongoing conflict.
A total of 246,000 people have fled their homes in the southwest and 25,000 have left the country altogether for Nigeria, according to UN figures.
It is thought that the displaced will struggle to cast ballots which could favour Biya as anglophones have traditionally backed the Social Democratic Front (SDF) party, whose candidate Joshua Osih could suffer at the ballot box.
In the capital Yaounde however, residents were more concerned about the unpredictable weather.
“I’ll vote tomorrow, it’s my duty as a citizen and I do it with pride. I’ll be voting for my candidate Paul Biya. He’s the president of all Cameroonians,” said Yaounde resident Ebanda Ebanda Beckey Thomas who wore a blue and white “Biya” scarf.
“His determination to help Cameroon develop pleases us, the things that he’s done for our country in the areas of education and health too,” he added as he dodged the rain. Despite the ubiquity of Biya’s posters across Cameroon, he has been virtually invisible during the campaign.
“The force of experience,” proclaim giant billboards in all of Cameroon’s large urban areas.
Biya made a brief public appearance in the electorally-crucial far north region last weekend but otherwise has not been seen or heard. Results must be posted within 15 calendar days of the poll by law, and authorities have previously waited the full fortnight before announcing the winner.
AFP
White US police officer convicted of murder for shooting black teenager
A white Chicago officer was convicted of second-degree murder Friday in the 2014 shooting of a black teenager that was captured on shocking dashcam video that showed him crumpling to the ground in a hail of 16 bullets as he walked away from police.
The video, some of the most graphic police footage to emerge in years, stoked outrage nationwide and put the nation’s third-largest city at the center of the debate about police misconduct and use of force. The shooting also led to a federal inquiry and calls to reform the Chicago Police Department.
Jason Van Dyke, 40, was the first Chicago officer to be charged with murder for an on-duty shooting in about 50 years. He was taken into custody moments after the verdict was read.
The second-degree verdict reflected the jury’s finding that Van Dyke believed his life was in danger but that the belief was unreasonable. The jury also had the option of first degree-murder, which required finding that the shooting was unnecessary and unreasonable. A first-degree conviction, with enhancements for the use of a gun, would have carried a mandatory minimum of 45 years.
Second-degree murder usually carries a sentence of less than 20 years, especially for someone with no criminal history. Probation is also an option. Van Dyke was also convicted of 16 counts of aggravated battery one for each bullet.
‘Chicago would have erupted’ if officer acquitted
One legal expert predicted that Van Dyke will be sentenced to no more than six years total. But because he’s an officer, it will be “hard time,” possibly spent in isolation, said Steve Greenberg, who has defended clients at more than 100 murder trials.
The teen, Laquan McDonald, was carrying a knife when Van Dyke fired at him on a dimly lit street where he was surrounded by other officers. One of Chicago’s leading civil rights attorneys said the conviction sends a message to minority communities that the police reforms that began after the video became public were not just for show.
Andrew Stroth said an acquittal would have sent the opposite message, dashing hopes for change.
“I think Chicago would have erupted,” he said.
Defense attorney Dan Herbert called Van Dyke “a sacrificial lamb” offered by political and community leaders “to save themselves.” He said it was a “sad day for law enforcement” because the verdict tells officers they cannot do their jobs.
“Police officers are going to become security guards,” he said.
A McDonald family spokesman thanked prosecutors for pursuing a case that, he said, many black attorneys did not believe could be won.
“I can’t rejoice because this man is going to jail,” said McDonald’s uncle, the Rev. Marvin Hunter. “I saw his wife and father. His wife and daughter didn’t pull the trigger. I could see the pain in these people. It bothered me that they couldn’t see the pain in us.”
The verdict was the latest chapter in a story that accelerated soon after a judge ordered the release of the video in November 2015.
The 12-person jury included just one African-American member, although blacks make up one-third of Chicago’s population. The jury also had seven whites, three Hispanics and one Asian-American.
Van Dyke ‘messed up’ testimony
Jurors said they spent much of their deliberations discussing whether to convict on first-degree or second-degree murder, not an acquittal. They said Van Dyke’s testimony did not help him. One woman said he “messed up” and should not have testified.
The jurors’ names were not made public during the trial and were not disclosed Friday during interviews with reporters at the courthouse. One said Van Dyke needed to “contain the situation, not escalate it.” He said the jury settled on second-degree murder because Van Dyke believed he was experiencing a real threat.
On the night of the shooting, officers were waiting for someone with a stun gun to use on the teenager when Van Dyke arrived, according to testimony and video. The video, played repeatedly at trial, showed him firing even after the 17-year-old lay motionless on the pavement.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys clashed over what the footage actually proved.
During closing arguments, prosecutor Jody Gleason noted that Van Dyke told detectives that McDonald raised the knife and that McDonald tried to get up off the ground after being shot.
“None of that happened,” she said. “You’ve seen it on video. He made it up.” But Van Dyke and his attorneys maintained that the video did not tell the whole story.
His attorneys portrayed the officer as being scared by the young man who he knew had already punctured a tire of a squad car with the knife. Van Dyke testified that the teen was advancing on him and ignoring his shouted orders to drop the knife.
Van Dyke conceded that he stepped toward McDonald and not away from the teen, as Van Dyke had initially claimed. But the officer maintained the rest of his account.
“The video doesn’t show my perspective,” he said.
The officer had been on the force for 13 years. In that time, he was the subject of at least 20 citizen complaints eight of which alleged excessive force, according to a database that includes reports from 2002 to 2008 and 2011 until 2015.
Though he was never disciplined, a jury did award $350,000 to a man who filed an excessive-force lawsuit against him. Van Dyke testified that McDonald was the first person he ever shot.
To boost their contention that McDonald was dangerous, defense attorneys built a case against the teenager, who had been a ward of the state for most of his life and wound up in juvenile detention after an arrest for marijuana possession. They also pointed to an autopsy that showed he had the hallucinogen PCP in his system.
‘Blue wall of silence’
Prosecutors stressed that Van Dyke was the only officer ever to fire a shot at McDonald.
They called multiple officers who were there that night as they sought to chip away at the “blue wall of silence” long associated with the city’s police force and other law enforcement agencies across the country. Three officers, including Van Dyke’s partner that night have been charged with conspiring to cover up and lie about what happened to protect Van Dyke. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Even before the trial, the case affected law enforcement in Chicago. The city’s police superintendent and the county’s top prosecutor both lost their jobs one fired by the mayor and the other ousted by voters. It also led to a Justice Department investigation that found a “pervasive cover-up culture” and prompted plans for far-reaching police reforms.
A week before jury selection, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he would not seek a third term, although his office insisted the case had nothing to do with his decision. He faced criticism that he fought the release of the video until after his re-election in April 2015.
Ahead of the verdict, the city prepared for the possibility of the kind of massive protests that followed the release of the video in November 2015, with an extra 4,000 officers being put on the streets.
The issue of race permeated the case, though it was rarely raised at trial. One of the only instances was during opening statements, when special prosecutor Joseph McMahon told the jurors that Van Dyke didn’t know anything about McDonald’s past when he encountered him that night.
“What we do know, what he (Van Dyke) did see, was a black boy walking down the street … having the audacity to ignore the police,” McMahon said.
(AP)