Judge allows release of another Chicago police-shooting video

Cedrick, who weighed 133 pounds and stood 5-foot-7, was killed in 2013 after he committed a carjacking and ran when cornered by police cars.

On Thursday, videos of the fatal police shooting of Cedrick Chatman, a black teenager, by a white Chicago police officer in January 2013 were released.

Chicago’s decision – involving the video of 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman – may signal a shift in how cities and prosecutors handle the release of such footage. The city has stopped with its attempts to block the video’s release.

The city had opposed release of the video for nearly three years. And there was a problem beyond that: An internal affairs investigator saw a total of five video angles of the shooting and found that the officers were never in danger and, thus, not justified to use force.

Patton said the city recognizes its policy “needs to be updated”, and is waiting for guidance from a newly formed police accountability task force.

Several prominent pastors said they’d boycott.

“I think it says that there is a culture of coverup, that there is a culture of protecting wrongdoers within the police department”, says Richard Boykin, Cook County Commissioner in Chicago. At the time of the shooting, official police accounts claimed that Chatman was armed and pointed a gun at police, causing at least one of the two pursuing officers to “fear for his life”.

“As Mr. Chatman approaches the corner, he makes a slight turn, a subtle turn to the right with his upper body”, Fry said in the deposition, according to a transcript. It turned out the teen was carrying a black iPhone box, according to police reports.

However, that finding only came after the firing of a senior IPRA investigator, who originally said the shooting had not been justified. At first, he ruled the shooting was unjustified, and claims he was sacked as a result. Police were intentionally shooting at Quintonio LeGrier, who they say charged at them with a baseball bat.

In the Chatman case, it was unclear how much the videos would reveal. An area judge has condemned Fry’s actions, saying he put both Toth and innocent bystanders at risk when he opened fire.

“A medical expert has reported that a bullet entered the suspect’s right forearm and then entered the lower right side of the abdomen”. But he had been at odds with the department over the internal assessment of police use of force for a while.

Coffman, meanwhile, has said the video shows the teen “wasn’t the aggressor at all”. Authorities said McDonald had taken PCP and had a pocket knife.

A federal judge in Chicago on Thursday allowed for the release of a police shooting video of teenager Cedrick Chatman.

“You have everything going on in Chicago right now rolled into one case”, Coffman said. But he said she wouldn’t watch it: “She wants nothing to do with this video”. The video was captured from a “blue light” camera mounted above an intersection near a high school and local businesses.

“I’m very disturbed about the way this happened”.

Two days before Christmas, the city filed its motion objecting to the videos’ release.

The hearing Thursday comes a day after the city did an about-face and dropped its opposition to making the video public.

But Chatman’s family insist that the videos are evidence the young man didn’t turn towards him.

Chicago officials fought to keep the video under protective order, arguing that it would inflame the public and unfairly sway the jury in a trial over the family’s wrongful death lawsuit.

In an agency where cops are rarely punished, Davis was accused of having an anti-police bias and was sacked in July.