Newly released video shows Chicago police shooting of teen

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.

The release of the latest video comes only two months after a judge’s orders to release the video in the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, a teenager who was shot 16 times by officers.

Chicago website before the city’s official release, shows two officers chasing Chatman, Chatman running around a corner, one officer drawing his gun, and then Chatman on the ground, all within 10 seconds. Police later found out the object was 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.

A federal judge has sharply criticized the city of Chicago for fighting the release of a police shooting video for weeks only to suddenly reverse course and call for its release.

Chatman’s mother filed a wrongful death suit against the city and the two police officers.

The detail of Chatman’s last words was included in hundreds of pages of investigative records released by the city Friday that laid out how Chatman’s suspected involvement in a violent robbery and carjacking ended with his fatal shooting less than a mile away.

“It is a political move to save face”, Coffman said. City attorneys nonetheless argued that the release of the recordings could inflame the public and interfere with the proceedings in the family’s lawsuit.

The surveillance videos show Chatman bailing out of the auto nearly as soon as Toth and Fry get out of their unmarked Ford Crown Victoria.

But the footage doesn’t clearly show if Cedrick turned toward the pursuing officers threateningly, or if he was holding something that could have been mistaken for a gun.

Andrew Hale, Fry’s lawyer, says the videos back up the police’s account of what happened.

An attorney for the police officers said the videos will support their story. “We’re here because of Dr. King”, Calloway said.

Davis, who reviewed the surveillance videos during the course of his investigation, told the Chicago Tribune in November that he never saw Chatman turn toward the officers. This statement was made shortly after the McDonald video’s release. Giacalone said the video shows the shooting was “a bad incident”, which is why city officials kept it secret “for so long”. Davis says IPRA administrators asked him to change his findings, which he says he had been asked to do many times before on other cases.

Coffman, the attorney for Chatman’s family, gave a much different description on Thursday of Toth handcuffing the teen.

The documents were released one day after video of the incident was released. Like Cedrick Chatman’s, that shooting was deemed justifiable, but the city settled with the teen and his family for $99,000, without an admission of guilt. As Fry and Toth pursued on foot, police say, the 5-foot-7, 133-pound Chatman turned toward them. When the call came over the radio minutes later about the carjacking, they doubled back and caught up with Chatman at the intersection of 75th and Jeffery Avenue.

“Cedrick was just running as the shots were fired”, Davis said. “I felt his threat was as such that I didn’t have time to say anything”, Fry said. Among their demands is the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff.