A video depicting another white USA police officer fatally shooting an unarmed Black man in January 2013 was released Thursday after a federal judge ordered it to be made public in yet another case of police brutality against minorities, especially Black.
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However, lawyers for Chatman’s family say the footage shows the teen was clearly running away from police and about to turn a corner when he was shot.
Chatman was not carrying a weapon and investigators later found an iPhone 5 case near his body. They said in a Wednesday court filing that the city was dropping its opposition in an effort to be more transparent while it waits for a recently created special task force to review policies regarding the release of videos showing disputed police shootings.
Since last fall’s release of a dash-cam video showing the shooting of McDonald, which led to a wave of public protests and a federal civil rights investigation of Chicago’s police department, Emanuel has vowed to reform the agency that investigates police misconduct.
Chatman’s family has filed a wrongful death suit against the city, which is still ongoing. Five cameras captured all or part of the shooting of Chatman: one at a school across the street, two at a food market and two placed atop light poles by police. Davis claims that he was sacked from his position with the IPRA because he refused to change his findings in his report of Chatman’s death.
The city’s law department on Thursday released three videos of the 2013 shooting of unarmed 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman. Fry presses his boot into Chatman’s back.
His family had sought the release of the video as it sued the city over the shooting, but city attorneys had fought to keep it under seal until legal proceedings end.
Van Dyke, 37, has been charged with first-degree murder and city has been accused of trying to cover-up a crime. Less than 10 seconds elapses from the time Chatman jumped out of the auto to the fatal shots.
Fry’s lawyer, Andrew Hale, said in a statement Wednesday that the videos back up the officers’ account of what happened that day. “Nothing but an iPhone box was recovered at the scene”.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the city’s police have been under sharp criticism since the November release of another video showing a Chicago police officer shooting to death Laquan McDonald, 17, in October 2014. Police were intentionally shooting at Quintonio LeGrier, who they say charged at them with a baseball bat.
Supervising investigator Lorenzo Davis, a 24-year veteran of the Chicago police force, disagreed with that decision and called Thursday’s video release a “vindication”.
But the judge said on Thursday Officer Fry had endangered Officer Toth’s life when he opened fire because he was so close to the teenager.
He confirmed there were no pending criminal investigations against the two officers in the Chatman shooting.
“We talk about media trials where it goes beyond just a police case, and I can see that’s a valid concern for the police union and police officers involved, and everyone who has to be involved in selecting a jury”, says Frankie Bailey, a criminologist at the University at Albany in NY. Police believe the box was obtained in the carjacking, according to Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), which had ruled the shooting justified.
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“I am very disturbed about the way this happened”, Gettleman said. “What Officer Fry could have done was use a radio to notify other groups [of] the direction of Mr. Chatman’s flight and cut him off, or join in the pursuit”.
