Jason Van Dyke, the Chiacgo Police officer who fatally shot LaQuan McDonald, intentionally damaged his dash-cam and failed to sync his microphone to the camera. Even more disturbing is that a new investigation is revealing that these tactics are commonplace in the Chicago Police Department and nationwide.
In a study first obtained DNA Info Chicago, more than 1,800 police logs in Chicago show a disturbing trend of intentionally disabling dashcam and mics in order to tamper with audio that might potentially be incriminating.
Jason Van Dyke, the officer charged with fatally shooting 17-year-old McDonald in October 2014, caused “intentional damage” to his dashcam at least once, along with other instances of his dashcam breaking, the logs show. The day of the killing, audio wasn’t picked up by Van Dyke’s car, nor by the squad car next to his.
The vehicle did pick up video, however, which shows Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times.
A month after the killing, police officials said it was “apparent” that Van Dyke had “failed to sync the MICS,” according to the records.
In less than a year, from September 2014 to July 2015, there were 90 recorded instances of microphones missing from police cars. On 30 other occasions, audio recording on dashcams had either not been turned on, or had been “intentionally defeated,” DNAinfo reported.
