Supervisors sign off
The inspector general's investigation sought to hold command staff accountable in addition to the patrol officers.
On the night of the shooting, McNaughton, a deputy chief of patrol, was in bed before he received a call from Johnson informing him that he needed to go to the scene as the department's "on-call incident commander," records show. As the highest-ranking officer there, McNaughton's duties were to take charge of the scene, walk IPRA investigators through what had happened and interview Van Dyke.
The next day, McNaughton wrote in a report that the shooting was justified, records show.
"Officer Van Dyke fired his weapon in fear of his life when the offender while armed with a knife continued to approach and refused all verbal direction," McNaughton wrote in a report.
In recommending that McNaughton be fired, the inspector general alleged that he had approved false police reports submitted by Van Dyke, Walsh and a third officer and revised a police news release to falsely state that McDonald was shot after he "continued to approach" the officers.
"I believed it that night and I believe it now, and if the definition of the word 'approach' is to come nearer to, then I don't think I was imprecise in that language," McNaughton told investigators. "I wish someone else could write statements. They could probably have crafted that better than I could, but it is there."
McNaughton, according to records, told investigators that he was fatigued that night after working long hours that day escorting President Barack Obama's motorcade and that may have affected his decision-making.
McNaughton retired this summer.
Roy, who joined the department in 1977 and supervised the detectives on the case, drew withering criticism from the inspector general's office.
Roy went to the scene and watched video of the shooting early on, according to the reports. He later took part in briefings for top command officers at which the video was viewed, the records show.
The inspector general placed blame for the detectives' allegedly false narratives on Roy, though Roy told investigators that responsibility for the reports fell largely to his subordinates.
Nonetheless, he viewed the video with inspector general's investigators and said officers made accurate statements. He maintained that the video showed McDonald brandished the knife at officers and tried to get up after he was shot.
The inspector general disagreed, finding that Roy "let stand reports that contained materially false statements and put forth a false narrative, which served to exaggerate the threat McDonald posed at the time of the shooting."
Roy, however, said the inspector general was wrong to depend so heavily on the video.
"It's been a great deal of concentration on the video; however, that concentration ignores the fact the video is from the back of Laquan McDonald," Roy told the inspector general's investigators. "The videotape that you displayed and that I reviewed with you gentlemen is much farther away from Laquan McDonald than Officer Van Dyke or Officer Walsh were. The video cannot account for the perceptions and view of those who were actually present."
The inspector general recommended on Aug. 17 that Johnson fire Roy, who was within months of the department's mandatory retirement age of 63, records show.
At the end of August, Johnson moved to fire the lower-ranking officers.
The Tribune, in late August, asked Johnson about Roy's role in the McDonald investigation and whether the department planned to seek to punish him. The superintendent responded that "CPD doesn't comment on open investigations."
Department records show Roy retired Sept. 15.
Roy was among the command officers that Valdez reported attended the meeting about 10 days after the shooting.
But there was an earlier meeting, two days after the shooting, that included then-Superintendent McCarthy, according to Juan Rivera, who at the time was chief of the Bureau of Internal Affairs. At that meeting, Rivera said, top department officials watched the video.
Rivera told the inspector general's investigators that he was concerned by the number of shots, and he suggested to McCarthy after the meeting that Van Dyke should be stripped of his police powers. McCarthy brushed off the suggestion, Rivera told the inspector general's investigators. Van Dyke was relieved of his police powers about 10 days after the shooting.
McCarthy could not be reached for comment.
While the Tribune obtained a department document indicating that Johnson was supposed to attend the meeting with McCarthy, he did not, said department spokesman Guglielmi.
Wayne Gulliford, then the department's chief of patrol, missed that meeting, as well, so a second briefing was held to watch the video and discuss the shooting, McNaughton told the inspector general's investigators. That is the meeting that Johnson attended, according to Valdez.
Asked by an inspector general's investigator whether anyone at that meeting voiced questions about the shooting's justification, Valdez replied, "Absolutely not."
Valdez and Gulliford declined to comment.
After his appointment in March as superintendent, Johnson was interviewed by two Tribune reporters who asked about the McDonald shooting.
Johnson acknowledged that he had viewed the video at the time of the shooting, but he demurred at explaining his reaction to the video.
"Did it shock you?" a Tribune reporter asked the new superintendent.
"I've been a cop for 27 years, and I've seen a lot of horrific things, not saying that that was one of them," he said of the McDonald video. "But I've seen a lot, and I know that we can learn a lot from not just that incident but different things that happen all across the city."
