Video of another Chicago police shooting set to be released next week

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the city will release video showing the October 2014 shooting of a young African-American man by a police officer sometime next week.

Dorothy Holmes says the tape, which she has seen, shows that her 25-year-old son Ronald Johnson was unarmed when he was shot and killed by Chicago Police Officer George Hernandez. Hernandez stated that Johnson had pointed a gun at him after a chase. Holmes had charged Chicago officials with hiding the tape in an effort to control the public’s outrage.

Emanuel is still dealing with fallout from the year-long delay in the release of the Laquan McDonald execution tape. That video showed a white Chicago police officer shooting 17-year-old McDonald 16 times as he laid on the ground, also in October 2014. 

Some observers say that viewing the numerous videos of police officers brutalizing and murdering unarmed African Americans has a hidden cost to it. Anti-police brutality activists insist that tapes like those in the McDonald and Johnson cases must be made available to the public in the interests of transparency and clearing the victim’s names.