Chicago police officers had tried to stop O’Neal about 7:30 p.m. July 28 at 74th Street and Merrill Avenue, part of the city’s South Shore community, as he was driving a Jaguar that was reported stolen in Bolingbrook, police said. An autopsy confirmed that O’Neal died of a gunshot wound to the back.
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(AP Photo/Tae-Gyun Kim). Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, second from right, is blocked by three protestors as he tries to deliver a written statement about the recent release of police shooting video to television reporters outside the pol.
A string of high-profile killings of black men by police in various US cities in the past two years has renewed a national debate about racial discrimination in the criminal justice system and given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
In all, nine videos were released from both body cameras and at least one dashboard camera. Another officer asks, “They shot at us too, right?” suggesting police believed they had been fired upon and that they did not know how many suspects were present.
Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo said it was important the public not rush to judgment of the officers involved in the shooting.
The jaguar and another police vehicle colide and more guns fire as someone runs. It was the city’s first release of video of a fatal police shooting under a new policy that calls for such material to be made public within 60 days.
“There is not actual body cam footage of the actual shooting.those police officers who murdered Paul O’Neal decided we couldn’t see it, decided they would control this, we won’t see it; and so the coverup has begun”, Oppenheimer said in a press conference, Friday.
“Since all the other cameras were working, I’m sure that camera was working and it (the shooting) was edited out or that officer turned it off on goal”, said Ja’Mal Green, an activist who spoke at the rally.
Johnson said he understands why some people are angry by what they saw in the nine video files released Friday. Kirkpatrick said the department would not wait for the completion of an investigation by the Independent Police Review Authority to implement new tactics and policies and that her bureau would be looking at best practices from around the country.
The officer who killed O’Neal said he believed O’Neal had fired at him and he returned fire with three to five rounds.
Protesters are planning to gather near a Chicago park where 50 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. called for fair housing.
Their rally and march, starting about six blocks away from Marquette Park, is expected to focus on last month’s police shooting that killed Paul O’Neal, a black 18-year-old.
That and other policy changes represent an effort to restore public confidence in the department after video released previous year showed a black teenager named Laquan McDonald getting shot 16 times by a white officer.
Johnson on Saturday said “I can’t tell you specifically” how the officers involved in the O’Neal shooting were trained in the department’s deadly force policy since it was revised in February 2015 to ban officers from shooting at a vehicle when a auto is the only danger.
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Johnson promised Friday that that if the officers acted improperly, they would “be held accountable for their actions”.
