Newly released video shows Cedrick Chatman, 17, was running away from police when he was shot dead.
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Investigators later discovered that the “dark object” was an iPhone box.
Chicago was bracing for more unrest after a judge Thursday ordered the release of another video showing a black teenager in a deadly confrontation with white police officers.
Chicago leaders and the city’s police department have been embroiled with scandal in recent months, stemming partly from the October 2014 fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager, by a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy after the release of the McDonald video, and has desperately tried to appear transparent and dedicated to police reform in its aftermath. Police say he ran from officers after they stopped him as a suspect in a carjacking.
The surveillance videos, according to attorneys for the Chatman family, contradict the police account of the incident. 45 caliber semiautomatic pistol toward Chatman “fearing for his life and the life of his partner”, according to the report. The video’s release comes as a result of a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Chatman’s family.
“From our point of view, it’s very clear Mr. Chatman is running as fast as he can”, Coffman said at a Thursday morning press conference.
Toth’s partner, Officer Kevin Fry, can be seen trailing farther back, aiming his gun at Chatman from a crosswalk and firing as the teen began rounding the corner in front of a bodega. The object, it turned out, was a black iPhone box.
The judge lifted a protective order that barred the release after the city dropped its objections. More than 400 people have been shot by the police in the past eight years, about 75 percent of them black.
Coffman said he was disgusted when he saw the video of the officer putting his foot on top of the slain teen, as if he were a “trophy kill”.
The Chatman death is one of six police-involved shootings that former IPRA investigator Lorenzo Davis claims he was forced to change after finding against the officer.
The Chicago Police Department is fighting against the release of the Cedrick Chapman shooting video. That policy was tested about a month and a half after the Rahim shooting in Boston, when an unarmed black motorist named Samuel DuBose was shot and killed during a traffic stop.
Federal judge Robert W. Gettleman said in court Thursday he was “disturbed” by how the city handled the situation and ruled the risk of tainting a jury pool with the video’s release is minimal because of the publicity surrounding the shooting.
Sharon Fairley, the acting chief of IPRA, said last week she has reached out to Davis and would like to meet with him.
Prosecutors had also initially charged Chatman’s friends with first-degree murder, arguing that despite being nowhere near the shooting, they “set in motion a chain of events that caused the death of Cedrick Chatman”. But Chatman family lawyers have said it is clear enough to show the teenager didn’t turn.
“I felt his threat was as such that I didn’t have time to say anything”.
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We talk with Brian Coffman, an attorney representing the boy’s family.
