A Cook County judge ruled on Thursday that a video allegedly showing a black teenager being shot 16 times and killed by a Chicago police officer last year should be released.
After his ruling, Judge Frank Valderrama heard arguments from the city to hold the video's release until an appeal, but denied its motion, saying that the city could not deny the footage under exemptions outlined in the state's Freedom of Information Act.
After at first telling the Guardian they would appeal, city officials later said they would let the judge's order stand and release the video within a week.
"In accordance with the judge's ruling the city will release the video by November 25, which we hope will provide prosecutors time to expeditiously bring their investigation to a conclusion so Chicago can begin to heal," mayor Rahm Emanuel's office said in a statement.
The ruling comes one day after a letter from the Illinois attorney general's office asking for the release of the video surfaced. The letter said police had violated the state's Freedom of Information Act (Foia) by refusing a request this year to release the footage showing the shooting of Laquan McDonald, 17, to the Wall Street Journal.
A separate Foia request by an independent journalist, Brandon Smith, led to the ruling on Thursday.
Smith said that while he was pleased with the ruling and that any possible protests were justified, he did not condone violence. Local residents and city officials have expressed fears that the video may cause riots or backlash similar to recent protests in Ferguson or Baltimore.
"Being violent to protest violence isn't logical," Smith said. "People have the right, the responsibility, to be angry, but they probably have the smarts to not be violent here."
McDonald's mother was not at the courthouse on Thursday, but a lawyer for the family, Jeffrey Neslund, said that she had not seen the video, and did not want to.
"What mother would want to see the execution of her son over and over again?" Neslund said.
Smith and his lawyers said the ruling was a win not just for their case, but for all Foia cases.
"With each win, we get a little bit closer to transparency," said Matt Topic, an attorney representing Smith. "And it gets a little harder to justify lack of transparency the next time."
On 20 October 2014, police responded to a 911 report that a man was breaking into cars at a trucking yard on Chicago's south-west side.
A police spokesman told to the Chicago Sun-Times that officers found McDonald "with a strange gaze about him" and carrying a four-inch knife, which he used, when confronted by officers, to slash a tire of a squad car and damage its windshield before fleeing on foot.
The officers pursued McDonald and a different squad car joined the pursuit, attempting to box in the teenager by a fence, the police union has said. McDonald allegedly refused requests to drop his knife and began approaching officers, officials have said.
According to the police union, an unnamed officer, fearing for his life, began firing shots at McDonald.
An autopsy report from the Cook County medical examiner's office showed that McDonald was shot 16 times, at least twice in the back.
In April 2015, the FBI announced a joint investigation with the Cook County state's attorney's office and the city's Independent Police Review Authority, into the shooting.
Two days later, the city council approved a $5m settlement for McDonald family, though they had not filed a lawsuit. Chicago's corporation counsel, Stephen Patton, said the dashboard-camera footage had prompted the city's decision to settle.
Since the announcement of the settlement, journalists and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have sought the video's release. The city has resisted, saying that it should not be released until all investigations are completed.
Tio Hardiman, a community leader and president of anti-violence group Violent Interrupters, applauded the ruling on Thursday and said that it would help in a local push for departmental change in the Chicago police.
"For too long, people have been out here in Chicago complaining about police going out and shooting unarmed African American males specifically," he said. "So the reality is that this should serve as a driving force to have superintendent McCarthy be fired immediately."
On Thursday, protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement told the Guardian that they would incorporate the decision into a planned demonstration at police headquarters, during the monthly Chicago police board meeting. The demonstration is aimed at pressuring the police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, to fire Officer Dante Servin, who shot and killed an unarmed 22-year-old black woman named Rekia Boyd in 2012.
- This story was amended on 20 November to correct the given name of Matt Topic.
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