Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Tim McGinty
After they obliged, McGinty said evidence showed it was indisputable that Rice was reaching to pull out his pellet gun when he was shot, despite differing expert testimony. In the Rice case, McGinty encouraged a grand jury not to charge the two officers who opened fire on Rice after less than two seconds on the scene. Alvarez started the day with a lead in the polls, but without key endorsements from former allies and the local media. Their protest and canvassing efforts culminated in the hashtag campaign #ByeAnita, words which could be seen fluttering on a huge banner trailing behind an airplane flying over downtown Chicago on election day. Instead they joined forces to oppose Alvarez. “I don’t believe any mistakes were made,” she insisted during the campaign.Ī coalition of activists – members of Black Youth Project 100, Assata’s Daughters and Black Lives Matter Chicago – did not endorse Alvarez’s challenger, Kim Foxx. The timing gave the distinct impression that a cover-up had barely been averted, and that Alvarez was more interested in protecting the jobs of officers than she was in justice.Īlvarez ignored calls for her resignation and always maintained that she waited more than 400 days because she believed that a federal investigation needed to be completed before charges were brought against Van Dyke. Though Alvarez ultimately charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder, she did it more than a year later, just before the camera footage was to be made public by a judge’s order. But dash camera footage of the incident – which was obtained by local journalists – showed he was moving away from police when Van Dyke opened fire, striking the 17 year old multiple times as he lay on the ground. Image copyright Getty ImagesĪccording to the widely disseminated original account of the shooting of Laquan McDonald, the teenager had lunged at officers with a knife when he was shot. Communities who refuse to be killed and jailed and abused without any chance at justice refused to allow that to happen. “Just a month ago, Anita Alvarez was winning in the polls. “Black youth kicked Anita Alvarez out of office,” the Chicago activist group Assata’s Daughters wrote in a triumphant statement last night. But they are the first ones to have faced off directly against the Black Lives Matter movement and lost. These are not the first prosecutors who recently failed to secure another term on name recognition and a “tough on crime” platform as the need for criminal justice reform gathers steam across the country. In Cleveland, McGinty recommended that a grand jury not charge the officers who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a public park. For Alvarez, it was the death of Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by former officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. In Alvarez’s case, it was a blow-out – she lost to her opponent almost 2-1.Īs the so-called “top cops” in their respective jurisdictions, Alvarez and McGinty made key prosecutorial decisions in the controversial killings of unarmed African Americans by police officers. Both Chicago’s Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga Prosecuting Attorney in Ohio, lost their bids for re-election. While most of the focus of Tuesday night’s primaries was on the battle for the White House, something extraordinary occurred in two local elections.