Chicago police investigate a police-involved fatal shooting in the 7300 block of South Merrill Avenue in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood on Friday, July 29, 2016.
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The shooting occurred during a stolen vehicle investigation.
Police shot and killed a black Chicago teen Thursday who appears to have been unarmed and was in a auto reported stolen earlier in the day from Bolingbrook.
Their suspensions are unlikely to satiate anti-police brutality activists who are seeking criminal prosecutions against police who kill Black men with apparent impunity. Chicago police have come under criticism for some of those incidents, including the October 2014 death of Laquan McDonald, 17, who was shot 16 times by an officer.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson reviewed the incident on Friday, then relieved two of the officers of their authority and assigned them administrative positions, pending the outcome of internal and Independent Police Review Authority investigations, the department said in a statement.
Johnson’s move came hours after the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Paul O’Neal’s death a homicide.
According to the arresting officers, as they got out to confront O’Neal he put the auto in drive and side-swiped a squad vehicle and a parked auto.
The three policemen shot and killed the 18-year-old on Thursday after he sideswiped a squad auto and another vehicle with a stolen Jaguar he was driving as police tried to arrest him, the Chicago Police Department said in a statement.
O’Neal, of the 1700 block of East 70th Street, was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he died at 9:08 p.m. That shooting, and the initial statements by a union spokesman about McDonald lunging at police that turned out to contradict what was on the video, raised serious questions about what the public was being told about police shootings.
The shooting happened at 7:30 p.m. Thursday after police spotted a stolen Jaguar near 73rd and Merrill. IPRA spokeswoman Mia Sissac said the footage would be posted online within 60 days, per city policy.
Eventually the crowd reconvened and cheered loudly as one of the organizers announced on a bullhorn – incorrectly – that the officers had been fired for violating police policy.
On Friday, Chicago Police Supt.
One issue that the department and IPRA must address is whether officers followed department policy by shooting at the vehicle.
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Although the incident remains under investigation, “it appears that departmental policies may have been violated by at least 2 of the police officers”, Guglielmi said in a statement.
