“I was concerned by some of the things that I saw on the videos and that’s why we took such a swift action. that we did last week to relieve the three officers of their police powers”, he told reporters.
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The new video portions show chaotic scenes as the three cursing and out-of-breath officers first fire on a careening stolen auto that was being driven by Mr O’Neal through a leafy neighbourhood in south Chicago and then, once he has fled from the vehicle, continue to take occasional shots as they chase him between houses and into back gardens. Shortly afterward, O’Neal can be seen lying face-down on the ground in a backyard, blood soaking through the back of his T-shirt. Police say they shot and killed an 18-year-old man who was in a stolen Jaguar that sideswiped a squad auto.
No gun was recovered from the scene.
The video footage released on Friday shows two officers firing at a stolen vehicle driven by O’Neal after it sped past them, the auto crashing into a police vehicle, and O’Neal running into a backyard where he was shot.
The head of the Independent Police Review Authority, the body charged with probing Chicago police misconduct, called the footage of the O’Neal shooting “shocking and disturbing”. The public is set to get its first look at videos related to the shooting Friday, Aug. 5, 2016. 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 video – and long-simmering dissatisfaction with police use of force among many African-Americans – led to sustained protests, and the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation to determine whether police had systematically violated residents’ rights. There was also an admission by the officer who believed he fired the fatal shot that he had no idea whether the 18-year-old was armed. O’Neal, who was driving the auto, was handcuffed after a chaotic foot chase through a residential neighborhood.
An officer can be heard explaining that the suspect “almost hit my partner. I (expletive) shot at him”.
In a hasty press conference on Saturday afternoon, the Chicago Police Superintendent, Eddie Johnson, confirmed that after viewing all nine available video clips of the incident in question he had taken away the police powers of the three officers involved. The policy was changed after public outrage a year ago following months of delay in releasing video that showed black teenager Laquan McDonald being 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. 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. 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. Johnson noted the officers in the O’Neal shooting had been using the body cameras for only a few days when the incident occurred. “There’s going to be a learning curve”, Johnson said of the body cameras. Lawyers for his family have called it a cover-up of “cold-blooded murder”.
Officers seemed keenly aware that they were wearing body cameras and that those cameras were recording all of their comments. “Think I’m good – bunch of shots”, the officer says. Whatever the intent, the officers immediately stopped talking.
Many want to know where’s the video that shows O’Neal’s fatal moment.
The lack of a complete video accounting of O’Neal’s shooting prompted allegations of a coverup from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and calls for a special prosecutor from an attorney for O’Neal’s family.
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He then fled from the auto, leading cops on a foot chase into a homeowner’s backyard. Officers chase him down a driveway between brick houses and over wooden fences.
