Chicago Police Shooting Video Released

Judge Robert Gettleman ordered the release of the videos in the shooting of 17 year old Cedrick Chatman in January of 2013.

While Boykin believes there are good officers within the Chicago Police Department, he says the Chatman and McDonald cases demonstrates a pattern of misconduct within the CPD.

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.

The video of the police pursuit and shooting of Cedrick Chatman was shot by different cameras.

Brian Coffman, the attorney for Chatman’s mother, stated, “the video shows Mr. Chatman running as fast as he possibly can away from these police officers”.

He blasted city attorneys for their December 23 motion in which they stated it was not clear from the videos who fired at Chatman.

He shot four times, striking Chatman twice.

But the unnamed policeman who shot him claims he did it because he feared for his life when Chatman turned towards him showed he had a “a large object” in his hand. The video shows that after he had been shot, while he was lying unarmed on the ground, Chatman was handcuffed and one of the arresting officers “places his boot on top of him”, CNN reports. The report states: “Officer Fry said the offender had a dark gray/black object in his hand”.

Fry can be seen trailing behind Toth, aiming his gun at Chatman from a crosswalk and firing as the teen began rounding the corner in front of a bodega. Police believe the box was obtained in the carjacking, according to Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), which had ruled the shooting justified.

The dark object turned out to be an iPhone box and from the grainy video, it’s impossible to see whether Chatman, as he ran, makes any move back toward the pursuing officers.

“It appears that he doesn’t turn around”, Giacalone said. That shows white officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014.

The city attempted to spin the release as a change of heart and an effort to be more transparent, despite the fact they fought the release for years. The video also led to protests, calls for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign and a federal civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department.

The police department hired a new investigator, who cleared the Fry and Toth for shooting Cedrick Chatman.

At 1:44 p.m., a distraught-sounding man reported to dispatchers that a group of men and women had attacked him in his vehicle, taken his shoes and $400 cash from his pockets and stolen the auto, according to the recordings released by the city. “Police! Put your hands up'”.

The surveillance videos, according to attorneys for the Chatman family, contradict the police account of the incident. An attorney for the family stated that the release of the video will further support the claims that there is a systemic problem in Chicago involving the slaying of African American youth by the city’s police force.

“There’s a long history of prosecutors [in Chicago and elsewhere] not supporting the release of any evidence because it would taint the jury pool and would eventually change witness statements”, says Jack McDevitt, director of the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University in Boston.

In the meantime, Green said, the city had decided that in this case “the public’s right to disclosure” outweighed concerns over jeopardizing a fair trial. “We are making a policy change on behalf of the people of Chicago”.