O’Neal died from a gunshot wound to the back, the Cook County medical examiner’s office determined following an autopsy Saturday.
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Police say they are investigating why that officer’s body cam was not recording.
Johnson was named the police superintendent in April after serving as interim leader.
Two Chicago officers involved in a shooting that left a suspect dead were relieved of their police powers even as the case is being investigated, police said.
“People can say all they want about, ‘he shouldn’t have been in a stolen vehicle.’ That is for the court system to have decide…” “If it is intentional misconduct, then they have to be held accountable”. However, three officers have been relieved of their duties in connection with the shooting.
Police recovered other footage of the incident, including dashcam video and footage from other body cameras, which were worn by two officers who fired into the vehicle driven by O’Neal but did not kill him.
Paul O’Neal’s murder was as a result of police officers spotting the deceased in a Jaguar convertible presumably stolen. But the actual shooting of O’Neal was not captured on the available video, a spokesperson for the Independent Police Review Authority said on Monday, according to the Sun Times. “Shooting him in the back, killing him unarmed”, said O’Neal family spokesman Ja’Mal Green.
Police can not legally shoot fleeing suspects unless they pose a threat to an officer’s life or unless the officer has a good faith belief the suspect poses a substantial danger to the public.
Michael Oppenheimer, the O’Neal family attorney, questioned why the body camera had not functioned in the key moment.
Eventually the crowd reconvened and cheered loudly as one of the organizers announced on a bullhorn – incorrectly – that the officers had been fired for violating police policy.
Community relations between police remain fraught with deep-seated distrust of law enforcement.
A police spokesperson said that the body cameras “were working” and had been issued to police in that district in the past eight to ten days, but it was unclear how many times they had been used prior to the shooting.
Four officers on the scene of a fatal police-involved shooting were wearing body cameras.
The Police Accountability Task Force, created by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, released its report in April, which was a scathing rebuke accusing the police department of institutional racism and describing its accountability system as broken.
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The steps by the department were also likely influenced by the police superintendent’s stated interest in addressing incidents where there is an apparent unjustified use of deadly force.
