CHICAGO — Three police officers were charged Tuesday with conspiracy, official misconduct, and obstruction of justice in connection with the investigation that followed the death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager fatally shot by a white Chicago police officer three years ago.

The three officers are accused of conspiring in the hours and days after the shooting to conceal the true facts to protect Jason Van Dyke, a fellow officer, who fired 16 times at McDonald, who was 17.

The long-awaited release in late 2015 of dashboard camera video of the shooting set off nights of demonstrations across Chicago, led to the removal of the city’s police superintendent, and prompted an investigation by the Justice Department into the Chicago Police Department, its treatment of black residents, and what some describe as a code of silence between officers.

Van Dyke, who was charged with murder in the shooting, was the only one to fire a weapon the night McDonald died along a Southwest Side street in 2014. But other officers backed up Van Dyke’s account of what happened that night: that McDonald had moved menacingly toward him with a knife. The dashboard video, however, contradicted those accounts, showing McDonald, who was clutching a knife, seeming to veer away from the police when Van Dyke began firing. The shooting continued as McDonald lay crumpled on the street.

NEW YORK TIMES