http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/laquanmcdonald/ct-jason-van-dyke-wife-laquan-mcdonald-met-20160512-story.html
Officer in Laquan McDonald killing 'not the monster' people think, wife says
When Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke and his wife moved into their raised ranch house 11 years ago, they tore down a red wooden fence that closed off their property and began organizing annual block parties.
Now the curtains in their front room's large picture window are typically closed. Cameras have been added to beef up their home security system. Their two daughters aren't allowed outside alone, and Van Dyke no longer volunteers at their school chaperoning class field trips or helping build homecoming floats.
His wife, Tiffany, said each day has been a struggle since her husband became, in his lawyer's words, Public Enemy No. 1 for shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
In the family's first interview, his wife insisted to the Tribune that Van Dyke, who is white, is not a trigger-happy, racist cop as he has been portrayed.
Their extended family is diverse and includes a black brother-in-law with whom Van Dyke is close. He, too, spoke in Van Dyke's defense. And the fatal shooting, indeed, marked the first time Van Dyke discharged his weapon in the line of duty over 12 years patrolling some of the city's most crime-ravaged neighborhoods, public records show.
"He is not the monster the world now sees him as," Tiffany Van Dyke said. "He prays for Laquan and his family. (The shooting) is not something he ever wanted to do."
The Tribune has also looked deeper into Van Dyke's time as an officer — including a record of complaints of mistreatment that one criminal justice advocate said "stands out like a sore thumb." And while McDonald's great-uncle, the Rev. Marvin Hunter, said he feels compassion for Van Dyke's family, he has little sympathy for the officer. Van Dyke acted as "judge, jury and executioner," said Hunter, a family spokesman.
The public outrage over the disturbing video of McDonald's October 2014 shooting has shaken the Police Department to its foundation, and the U.S. Justice Department is taking an unprecedented look at questionable longtime police practices that a mayoral task force recently found to be rooted in racial disparity and discrimination.
At the center of the firestorm is Van Dyke, 38, who has been suspended without pay or benefits since he was charged last fall with first-degree murder. He has declined to comment on the advice of his attorney, but with Van Dyke's approval, his wife met a Tribune reporter in their modest Southwest Side home — filled with framed photos of the couple with their two middle-school-age daughters during happier times.
For more than three hours, Tiffany Van Dyke spoke of what it is like to live in a fishbowl with a man she described as a loving husband and father and a "kind, gentle soul."
Still, she acknowledged her husband is not the same man she married 14 years ago. The violence police confront on a daily basis takes a toll, she said, and the couple was in marriage counseling before the shooting. The tragedy, she said, has brought them closer as they fight to survive an uncertain future.
"My hope is that people out there, the general public, the people who are hearing only one side, they will see the human side to my husband," she said. "He is not the person as he is being portrayed."
Suburbia to Englewood
The Tribune has told the tragic story of McDonald's life, born to an absent father and teen mother ill-equipped to care for him and exposed to childhood neglect and abuse. A state ward, McDonald embraced the drugs and gangs that saturated his West Side neighborhood. Diagnosed with learning disabilities and complex mental health problems, he had school expulsions and drug arrests and was in and out of juvenile detention.
Yet many child welfare officials found the 17-year-old boy funny, charismatic and always protective of his younger sister. He showed signs of resilience, giving those officials hope he might defeat his brutal environment.
But beyond what can be gleaned from Van Dyke's personnel file and other public records, little has been reported about the personal side of the man whose decision in those few fateful seconds has fueled such incendiary emotions.
Van Dyke grew up in the western suburbs, about a half-hour west of Chicago but far from the brutal landscape of McDonald's world. His parents still live in the house where Van Dyke and his younger sister were raised in a working-class neighborhood.
Van Dyke's father, Owen, who provided a brief statement to the Tribune and answered a few follow-up questions, described his only son as a kid who loved being outdoors, playing baseball and basketball, riding his bike from dawn to dusk. He did woodworking projects with his grandfather and fished with his dad. His mother, Susanne, still has the Christmas ornaments he made as a child.
"We will continue to support (our son) as best we can and we hope people will consider all the facts and circumstances in this case," wrote his father, 74, a retired electrician who has accompanied his son to every court appearance, often passing by angry protesters who he said shouted threats and once damaged his pickup truck. "Jason worked hard under often very dangerous conditions and put his life at risk for many years protecting the people of Chicago. What happened was a terrible tragedy, but our son is not a murderer."
At Hinsdale South High School, he played on the football team and participated in band, playing trumpet and baritone before his 1996 graduation.
Van Dyke met his wife 16 years ago when the two worked at the same company in Aurora. They complemented each other, she said, since he's an introvert and she is outgoing, independent and social. They married about two years later.
Tiffany Van Dyke said her husband didn't grow up wanting to be a cop. He planned to follow in his dad's footsteps in the trades. But a history buff with an interest in the military, he took some criminal justice courses in college and decided on a career in law enforcement.
When Van Dyke applied to be a Chicago police officer in 2000, a woman who lived across the street from his childhood home wrote a reference letter still contained in his personnel file. Peggy Nemec described Van Dyke's kindness to her son, Timmy, who had Down syndrome. Both mother and son have since died, but Nemec's husband, John, praised Van Dyke.
"You can go around the neighborhood and ask anyone. No one will have anything bad to say about Jason," said Nemec, 83, who after watching the video echoed an opinion offered by many who know and support the embattled officer. "The kid was doing his job. He snapped or something. That can happen working in those kinds of conditions for so long. I just hope he gets a fair shake."
Van Dyke graduated from the police academy in 2002. His wife, 35, a fitness instructor, smiled at the memory of her husband walking across the stage to collect his certificate.
"That was one of the proudest days of my life," she said. "He knew he was going to be able to do something that would hopefully make a difference."