White Officer Who Shot Black Teenager 16 Times Pleads Not Guilty To Murder Charges

Jason Van Dyke the white Chicago police officer who shot a black teenager 16 times has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

Prosecutors announced last month they were charging Van Dyke with six counts of murder for the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald as he has now appeared in Cook County Criminal court on Tuesday in Chicago.

Hours later, the city released squad car video of the shooting in which McDonald is seen veering away from Van Dyke before the veteran officer opens fire. The teenager was only holding a small knife when he was slayed, sparking questions over whether another method should have been used to subdue him. The footage set off weeks of protests and led to the forced resignation of Chicago's police superintendent and a federal investigation of department practices. Van Dyke, who is white, will be assigned a judge during the hearing in the nation's third-largest city as his lawyer is seeking to have the case tried outside of Cook County.

High-profile killings of black men by mainly white police officers since mid-2014 have triggered waves of protests across the country and fueled a civil rights movement under the name Black Lives Matter. Over the weekend, the fatal shootings of two black people in Chicago by a police officer set off more protests, and led to Emanuel's decision to cut short his family vacation to Cuba to deal with the fallout.  Bettie Jones, a mother of five and college student Quintonio LeGrier, were killed early Saturday by an officer responding to a call that LeGrier was threatening a family member with a baseball bat. Police said Jones was killed by accident during the altercation with LeGrier.

Protests over the shooting of Laquan McDonald led to the resignation of Chicago's police chief and a U.S. Department of Justice probe into whether the department uses lethal force too often, especially against minorities.