None of the nine videos show the suspected vehicle thief getting shot in the back.
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The videos are peppered with lines from police who seem to have realized the situation may have escalated more than necessary. The Chicago Police Department said they will provide “full cooperation” as the investigations are conducted.
This video is taken from the perspective of one of the police officers who fired his gun in the incident. “We are releasing this information that we understand is of utmost public interest”, she said. CNN did not air the videos on Friday afternoon.
The stolen vehicle appears to have hit a cop auto head on and both are damaged with smoke coming out.
Charlene Carruthers is national director of the Black Youth Project 100.
CHICAGO-Chicago authorities on Friday released nine video clips related to last week’s fatal police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man who crashed a stolen auto into a police vehicle, then fled into a nearby backyard where he was gunned down. The officer who shot O’Neal had a body camera, but it wasn’t operating at the moment of the shooting.
“No, the shots were coming at us when the auto was coming at us”, the officer said before describing how he ended up in the backyard chasing O’Neal on foot. The agency that investigates police misconduct made the videos public Friday morning.
Meanwhile, investigation on the O’Neal shooting continues, as Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson released a prepared statement earlier today, promising that the people involved “will be held accountable for their actions”, and that investigators will stick to the facts when reviewing the case.
O’Neal, 18, was suspected of driving a stolen auto before the fatal incident last Thursday.
“They shot at us too, right?” one officer asks in a video. Police followed him and continued to open fire as he ran behind a residential home, where he was fatally shot.
Kane County State’s attorney Joseph McMahon is sworn in by Judge Vincent Gaughan as the independent attorney to prosecute Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke during a hearing in Chicago.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Chicago-based civil rights leader, told Reuters the lack of footage of O’Neal’s killing was “a cover up”.
Another video, taken from a police dashcam, shows O’Neal’s ramming the stolen Jaguar into a police cruiser head-on (about 4 minutes into the video). Department policy dictates that all officers involved in shootings be assigned to desk duty. They help a third officer scale a wooden fence and then leave to find another entrance to the backyard. The graphic video shows a stolen vehicle being fired at by two officers before the teenage driver crashed and tried to run from the scene, only to be gunned down, shot in the back and killed by an officer.
One cop goes through his backpack, while the other officers -around six to eight of them, can be heard asking if everyone is alright. Moments later, when Paul O’Neal is on the ground, blood soaking through his T-shirt, an officer can be heard angrily accusing him of firing at police. On its face, the tragedy seems like just the latest instance of an unarmed black man dying at the hands of trigger-happy American cops, though speed of its publication does hint at meager progress in how one city plagued by police violence is addressing officer conduct.
“We don’t see the fatal shot”, Flores added.
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“You shot at us”, the officer is heard saying, while shouting an expletive at O’Neal.
