CHICAGO — After more than 1,200 days in custody for the murder of Laquan McDonald, former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke is about to go home. The white patrol officer’s decision on Oct. 20, 2014, to fire 16 shots into McDonald as the Black teenager walked away from cops while holding a knife once seemed destined to alter the trajectory of a city long plagued by allegations of police brutality and a code of silence that allowed the routine trampling of the rights of citizens. And in many ways, the city Van Dyke will return to has changed. The mayor whose mishandling of the crisis helped …
