The video clearly shows officers firing down the street at the auto as it speeds away.
Advertisement
Protesters are planning to gather Saturday for a rally and march that’s expected to focus on last month’s Chicago police shooting that killed Paul O’Neal, a black 18-year-old.
“A lot of people are upset by what they saw, and they have a right to be”, said Superintendent Eddie Johnson, speaking at a news conference.
“They had had those cameras maybe about a week”. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pointed to body cameras as a tool to build trust in the police; department officials have not said why the camera did not record the shooting.
Oppenheimer alleged that the non-operating body camera was part of a police effort to cover up what he called a “cold-blooded murder”. One officer is heard asking, “They shot at us too?” “There’s going to be a learning curve”, he said.
Attorney Michael Oppenheimer, who represents O’Neal’s family, said the video showed officers taking “street justice into their own hands”.
At least one officer thought the teen had fired on police, but in fact it was “friendly fire” by other officers as they shot at O’Neal, who was unarmed.
FILE – In this July 29, 2016 file photo, Chicago police investigate a police- involved fatal shooting in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the officer’s body camera could have been deactivated when the stolen Jaguar slammed into his squad auto and set off the air bags. Nine videos from police dashcams and body cameras were released Friday.
In a statement released around the same time as the video footage, Independent Police Review Authority Chief Administrator Sharon Fairley called the video “shocking and disturbing”. “As with every investigation, where we believe information can be released to the public without jeopardizing the investigation, we do so, even if it is before the 60-day timeline outlined in the City’s transparency policy”. That and other policy changes represent an effort to restore public confidence in the department after video released past year showed a black teenager named Laquan McDonald getting shot 16 times by a white officer.
The McDonald shooting video prompted accusations that Mayor Rahm Emanuel had delayed its release until after his re-election and some protesters called for him to resign. Emanuel denied he delayed the release and has refused to step down, but he fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and replaced him with Johnson.
Videos from the fatal shooting of teenager Paul O’Neal by Chicago police show officers firing into a vehicle that was being driven away from them and, later, officers handcuffing O’Neal as he lay wounded behind a home.
A police department policy forbids firing into a moving vehicle when the vehicle is the only force used against the sworn member or another person.
But the policy also says that officers “will not unreasonably endanger themselves or another person to conform to the restrictions of this directive”, meaning they have the right to defend themselves if they or someone else are in imminent danger of being struck.
Advertisement
During the news conference, the Police Department’s new head of organizational development, Anne Kirkpatrick, told reporters she’d take a “hard look” at how the department’s training and tactics could improve from the O’Neal shooting.
