to watch, but when i think of peaceful, i don t know if we ll see looting or cars burning. that s what i mean by peaceful, but the passion will still be there. rahm emanuel, the mayor of chicago was adamant in tonight s press conference that officer van dyk does not represent the culture of the chicago pd. anybody who is there to uphold the law cannot act like they re above the law. and that is both a principle that is used to make sure it reflects the culture in the police department. and i want to say one thing. there are men and women, both in leadership positions and rank and file who follow and live by that principle every day. all right, so, joy, you have the mayor there appealing to the community, saying, look, you know, don t judge the police department, what do we know about the relationship between the black community in chicago and rahm emanuel? is he and his police department? is he in position right now to make a statement like that and
when you were talking about this a little bit earlier in the year, first-degree murder against a police officer is so unusual. how hard in a court of law is that going to be to prove? it would normally be very hard. it goes above and beyond misuse of the weapon and goes into the officer s mental mind state of saying that he was essentially trying to have a premeditated intentional killing for no reason or justification whatsoever or that he had sort of a depraved heart, complete lack of regard for human life. now, look, i just watched the whole video in its context in the newsroom. it is hard to watch. it is graphic. it is a mowing down of a human being. we don t have all the words to really express what it is, but i can tell you that those 13 seconds that have been referred to, that the prosecutors reference as part of the reason she went for the first-degree murder charge are agonizing, because 13 seconds of this individual, mcdonald, on the ground, barely moving, and bullets flyin
and you were saying, first-degree murder so unusual, when you were talking about this a little bit earlier in the year, first-degree murder against a police officer is so unusual. how hard in a court of law is that going to be to prove? it would normally be very hard. it goes above and beyond misuse of the weapon and goes into the officer s mental mind state of saying that he was essentially trying to have a premeditated intentional killing for no reason or justification whatsoever or that he had sort of a depraved heart, complete lack of regard for human life. now, look, i just watched the whole video in its context in the newsroom. it is hard to watch. it is graphic. it is a mowing down of a human being. we don t have all the words to really express what it is, but i can tell you that those 13 seconds that have been referred to, that the prosecutors reference as part of the reason she went for the first-degree murder charge are agonizing, because 13 seconds of this individual, mc
today, anybody who is there to uphold the law cannot act like they re above the law. and both a principle that is used to make sure it reflects the culture in the police department. and i want to say one thing, there are men and women both in leadership positions and rank and file who follow and live by that principle every day. jason van dyke does not represent the police department. i can give you chapter and verse of people who are doing things beyond what their quote/unquote their job description is, who every day go out, not just to protect, but also to serve. so when it comes to culture, i also believe it s a work in progress and you re never at just a point. there are officers every day, i ve seen it in little league teams, i ve seen it in mentoring programs. officers don t just wear are not just officers when they re wearing the uniform, they re there to serve a community and
not to watch it, because they feel they can understand the facts without actually seeing the death on camera, the killing on camera. but people will have to make up their own minds about what do we learn about the system and are there problems here. mayor emanuel just said, he hadn t watched the video, but he s open to working on reforms and problems. without videotape, without video evidence, what does the civilian oversight actually mean? if it takes a year to come to this conclusion, and again, we re not in a court o of law, we re not going to hear the defendant s case, but if it comes this long to come to the conclusion that there was even a crime committed, but for the videotape, a lot of people were wondering, would anything be done in a case like this and would this shooting have ever resulted in charges at all? it s a great question and a great point and we ll continue to talk about this after we take a quick break. stay with us. you re watching msnbc live. nope, you can re