The latest set of videos – with views from at least four surveillance cameras – provides a distant, and somewhat incomplete, view of the brief moments on January 7, 2013, after the police confronted Cedrick Chatman, a 17-year-old black youth, in a auto at a busy South Side intersection.
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According to a report from the Independent Police Review Authority, officers Lou Toth and Kevin Fry-who allegedly fired the fatal gunshots-reported that Chatman ignored verbal demands to “put his hands up”, turned toward them and pointed a “dark object” at them that appeared to be a weapon.
Investigators later discovered that the “dark object” was an iPhone box.
City attorneys said in a filing in U.S. District Court Wednesday that the city is dropping its opposition to the release in an effort to be more transparent while it waits for a recently created special task force to review policies regarding the release of such videos.
Its release comes just weeks after Chicago PD released dash cam video of another unarmed black teen being shot and killed. That statement was made after the release of the police shooting video that shows Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times.
Public scrutiny and outrage following the video’s release in November 2015 forced the resignation of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and prompted a Department of Justice investigation into the city’s police department.
He said he was “very disturbed” by the city’s attempts to hold on to the footage.
Family members have argued the video will counter the city and police’s narrative that the 17-year-old was a danger to police. But he said she wouldn’t watch it: “She wants nothing to do with this video”.
“The city of Chicago has had not only the last month and a half they’ve had over the last 21/2 years to be transparent in this case”, Coffman said.
For the third time in two months, the city of Chicago has been compelled to release footage of police fatally shooting a black teenager or young man. Police later spotted the stolen auto and stopped it before Chatman jumped out and took off running, prosecutors said at the time. “Nothing but an iPhone box was recovered at the scene”.
The video released Thursday was shot by several surveillance cameras and from various angles.
Brian Coffman, co-counsel for the slain teen’s mother, Linda Chatman, said that the video will show that the teen was “running away as fast as he can” from police.
Chicago city officials had originally filed a protective order to keep the video out of the public eye, saying that its release would sway a potential juror pool. But as protests and commentary around high-profile cases have mounted, the need to fill an information vacuum with video evidence has gained supremacy over the idea that prosecutors have wide discretion to withhold evidence until trial.
Andrew Hale, a lawyer for two officers named as defendants in the lawsuit, said in an email Wednesday that the video will show his clients acted properly. It’s hard to tell what happened next, but according to Chatman’s family’s attorney, Cedrick falls to the ground, is flipped onto his stomach, and is handcuffed.
A lawyer for Chatman’s family says the video will show he never turned toward officers and posed no threat.
The officer shot Cedrick Chatman during a foot chase. They urged the release of the video to the public as part of that case.
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“The city recognizes…we’re in a new world”, Green said. Fry, who has been a Chicago officer since 2003, was not charged or disciplined in the shooting.
