Families demand Chicago police, mayor explain shooting deaths

A Chicago police officer fatally shot 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier over the weekend, and his father is already filing a lawsuit against the city.

Chicago police said a 55-year-old woman was “accidentally struck and tragically killed” by an officer Saturday. “I can say what happened was tragic”. Tensions have only increased in the last 48 hours after the latest police shooting that left a 19-year-old engineering student and 55-year-old mother of four dead. It is not clear whether Jones had even finished opening up the door for them when officers fired at LeGrier who was charging down the stairs still carrying the bat. Interim police superintendent John Escalante was more forthright about police responsibility for Ms. Jones’s death than the department had been after previous shootings.

Antonio LeGrier told the AP that moments earlier he heard Jones yell, “Whoa, Whoa Whoa!”

“I used to watch the news daily and I would grieve for other mothers, other family members, and now today I’m grieving myself”, Cooksey said at a news conference outside the residence earlier Sunday. “If he listened to what the police asked him to do the first time, there was no reason for him to get shot five times”, said Carlissa Wilson, the victim’s girlfriend.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced on December 7 that the US Justice Department would investigate the “patterns and practices” of the Chicago Police Department. She was known for working with community groups committed to reducing violence, said Person, who said he was also a friend of hers.

Janet Cooksey says recently, her son Quintonio had been suffering from mental illness.

Noting that “there are serious questions” about the shootings “that must be answered in full by the Independent Police Review Authority’s investigation”, Emanuel on Sunday called for changes in how Chicago police are trained, the Sun-Times reported.

He saw a police officer who was “acting as if he knew that what he had done was wrong”, Foutris said.

A police statement said officers “were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon”.

Both were shot and killed after police were called to a private residence in response to a call about a domestic dispute.

The complaint says Antonio LeGrier wasn’t given a choice on whether to leave his home with police, and that while there was no probable cause to hold him, he wasn’t allowed to leave the police station until he gave statements to detectives. Relatives of the young man said he was shot seven times. The source also said investigators were looking into whether responding officers knew they were dealing with someone with mental health issues and whether anyone on the scene was equipped with a Taser.

Weigard told police he was “applying for a job as a mystery shopper because it seemed like a cool job” and that he was in the manager’s office looking for an application, an officer wrote in the report. The medical examiner’s office said he died of “multiple gunshot wounds”.

There have been weeks of protests over police shootings, including that of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times by an officer in October of last year.

Officers were dispatched to the area, but the father and child disappeared before police arrived, according to Gavin.

“Twenty-six people and the girls were killed, while many other people were injured”, he added.

Several people who spoke wore T-shirts reading, “Rahm Failed Us”.

Cheryl Dorsey, a retired Los Angeles police sergeant and law enforcement consultant for CNN, also wondered why police didn’t use stun guns.