Video of Chicago police shooting, killing carjacking suspect released

Surveillance video in connection with a Chicago police officer’s fatally shooting 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman was released today by attorneys for the teen’s family. It turned out to be an iPhone box.

City lawyers explained the city was dropping its opposition to the video’s 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 videos showing disputed police shootings, according to documents filed in court Wednesday.

Earlier, Coffman said the case represented everything Chicago has endured in recent months: a black teen gunned down by police, a city refusing to release the video, and the possibility police made false statements to justify the shooting.

Alvarez has been facing calls to resign since waiting a year to charge a white Chicago police officer with murder after he shot a black teenager 16 times in 2014.

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.

However, that finding only came after the firing of a senior IPRA investigator, who originally said the shooting had not been justified. The city released a 911 call made by the victim of the alleged carjacking. CITY, ACTIVISTS AND MINISTERS RESPOND TO VIDEO RELEASE The mayor tried to leave his only public event Thursday morning without answering questions about the administration decision to release video of the fatal Cedrick Chatman police shooting.

When shots rang out, Toth was still trying to close in on Chatman.

Lawyers for the family of Chatman were suspicious over the timing of the video’s release.

The second officer, identified as Fry in the lawsuit, ran diagonally to try to cut off Chatman’s path, police said.

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. An iPhone case was later found near his body.

An attorney for Chatman’s family said the release of the video would show a systemic problem in the city, coming in the wake of revelations about other cases involving police shootings of African-Americans.

The attorneys for Chatman’s mother filed a separate motion, saying the videos “speak for themselves, and a reasonable jury may indisputably conclude” that the teen didn’t turn toward the officers.

Chicago Corporate Counsel Steve Patton announced Wednesday the city would not block the public release of the video.

Brian Coffman, attorney for the family of Cedrick Chatman who was shot and killed by Chicago police in 2013, speaks at a news conference at the federal courthouse Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, in Chicago.

Officer Fry said he feared for his life and that of his partner, Officer Lou Toth, as he shot four times, hitting the fleeing suspect twice. Fry claimed in his deposition that he feared for his partner’s life, as well as “any pedestrians in the area”. Fry, who has been a Chicago officer since 2003, was not charged or disciplined in the shooting.

On a sunny January afternoon in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood three years ago, two plainclothes police officers pulled up to a silver Dodge Charger that dispatchers said had been taken in a violent carjacking a few blocks away.

“Every time a video comes out, I do feel vindicated that there is more transparency now”, he says.