Chicago police have released a string of videos showing officers firing their guns at a stolen vehicle, giving chase and then shooting and handcuffing the 18-year-old driver as he lay wounded.
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Chicago police released a video on Friday, of officers chasing an unarmed African American teenager who was fatally shot in the back.
The footage does not capture the actual shooting, but it does show officers firing at the fleeing auto before O’Neal exits the vehicle and starts running. Though it’s hard to see it in any of the videos, O’Neal is reported to have “rammed” one police auto and “sideswiped” another before officers started shooting at him.
Before the release of the videos, Sharon Fairley, IPRA’s chief administrator, said in a statement that the agency is proceeding “as deliberately and expediently as possible in pursuit of a swift but fair determination” into the black teen’s shooting.
“It’s disturbing and it’s violent and it’s scary”, said O’Neal family attorney Michael Oppenheimer.
In another video, the Jaguar skirts past a police cruiser, and an officer can be seen chasing after it while firing multiple shots one-handed from his pistol (at about 9:30 in the video).
The officer with the bodycam rushes forward as the victim is already surrounded by his colleagues, shoves the teenager’s head onto the ground and yanks his arms behind his back to put him in handcuffs with the help of an another officer.
Of the 28,567 allegations of misconduct that were filed against Chicago Police Department officers between March 2011 and September 2015, less than 2 percent of those complaints resulted in any discipline, according to The Citizens Police Data Project. Authorities have not said specifically what policy was broken.
Wednesday night, Bolingbrook police released video footage showing O’Neal carrying a backpack, and other men with stolen cars, including a Buick, at a Speedway gas station.
“We just watched a family watch the execution of their loving son”.
The Independent Police Review Authority released nine videos of the incident, including the one below. IPRA was given the task of investigating the officers involved to see if they followed proper protocol.
“We have a body camera of the actual shooting which either didn’t work, was turned off, was manipulated or in some way covered up”. On Friday, he promised that if the officers acted improperly, they would “be held accountable for their actions”.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that the department and the police review authority were trying to determine why the body camera wasn’t working.
The fatal shot is not captured on video.
O’Neal, who was unarmed at the time, was shot in the back, and no one was seen rendering any aid in the footage.
The video shows officers firing into the Jaguar in which O’Neal was allegedly fleeing police. “Who was shooting in the alley, was that him?” another adds.
One officer can be heard saying, “I shot”.
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Chicago Police Department is being sued by the 18-year-old’s family.
