Chicago officials have released body camera footage in last month’s fatal police shooting of a 13-year-old boy.
The video appears to contradict the police version of events that the shooting of Adam Toledo was justified because the suspect appeared to have something shiny in his hands at the time he was shot in the chest, according to initial reports from a Thursday news conference.
The lawyer for Adam’s family said he did not have a gun in his hand when he was shot by police, according to reporter Meredith Barack of CBS Chicago.
Adeena Weiss Ortiz, the Toledo family’s attorney, also said Adam complied with the officer’s commands, Barack reported.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot urged the public to remain peaceful and reserve judgment until an independent board can complete its investigation into the shooting.
Choking up at times, she decried the city’s long history of police violence and misconduct, especially in Black and brown communities, and said too many young people are left vulnerable to “systemic failures that we simply must fix.”
“We live in a city that is traumatized by a long history of police violence and misconduct,” the mayor said. “So while we don’t have enough information to be the judge and jury of this particular situation, it is certainly understandable why so many of our residents are feeling that all too familiar surge of outrage and pain. It is even clearer that trust between our community and law enforcement is far from healed and remains badly broken.”
Asked whether the video showed whether the teen fired on the officer, Lightfoot said she had seen no evidence that he had. She described watching the jumpy footage as “excruciating.”
“As a mom, this is not something you want children to see,” said the mayor. She declined to say if the footage showed whether the teen was holding a gun when he was shot, but she called a prosecutor’s assertion at a recent hearing that Adam had a gun when he was shot “correct.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of video
The body cam footage shows an officer responding to a report of gunfire in Little Village, a predominantly Latino neighborhood on the city’s West Side on March 29.
Soon the officer is shown out of his squad car and engaged in a chase with Adam in an alleyway, the video shows.
The officer commands the suspect to stop several times and to show his hands.
At full speed, Adam’s exact actions in the video are difficult to discern and show he may have been raising his hands in the air instead of pointing toward the officer. However, police officials slowed down the video at the news conference to allow a frame-by-frame view of the split seconds when Adam turned toward the officer.
Reports say Adam appeared to have something, perhaps a shiny object, in his hand as he stopped and turned toward the officer, who opened fire immediately as Adam moved.
The boy falls backward to the ground with no further confrontation. Blood can be seen on his sweatshirt.
It’s unclear whether Adam was following the officer’s commands to surrender or if his sudden movement was actually a threat toward the officer. Later in the video, after other officers arrived on scene, a handgun can be seen lying on the ground on the other side of a fence where Adam went down. The gun, however, never appears near Adam as officers administered chest compressions to save his life.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT BELOW (NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN)
The video evidence was made public for the first time Thursday and included several other videos and recordings as the community demanded officials shed more light on what happened.
The release of the video comes amid days of protests and civil unrest throughout Chicago, a city with a history of suppressing damning police videos. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability review board initially said it couldn’t release the video because it involved the shooting of a minor, but it changed course after the mayor and police superintendent called for the video’s release.
“COPA’s core values of integrity and transparency are essential to building public trust, particularly in incidents related to an officer involved shooting, and we are unwavering in our commitment to uphold these values,” the board said in a statement Wednesday.
The Toledo case converges with separate protests in the Minneapolis area over the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, which occurred Sunday just miles away from the trial of former Officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged in the death of George Floyd.
On the night of the shooting, Adam and a 21-year-old man ran from police, and an officer shot the teen once in the chest following a foot chase in what the department described as an armed confrontation.
Police said a handgun the boy had been carrying was recovered at the scene. The 21-year-old man was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest.
The Chicago Police Department has a long history of brutality and racism that has fomented distrust among the city’s many Black and Hispanic residents.
The shooting of Adam immediately recalled the 2014 fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald, a Black 17-year-old which sparked protests after the city fought for months to keep the public from seeing the video of a white officer shooting McDonald 16 times.
The officer was eventually convicted of murder.
And the city tried to stop a TV news station from broadcasting video of a botched 2019 police raid in which an innocent, naked Black woman wasn’t allowed to put on clothes until after she was handcuffed.
Last year in October, an unarmed Black teenager was killed and the mother of his baby wounded after police opened fire on a “suspicious vehicle” in a suburb of Chicago.
Marcellis Stinnette, 19, died, and his girlfriend, Tafarra Willams, survived.
The shooting in Waukegan sparked outrage in the community.
In light of recent emotional protests in the community, the Toledo family urged people to “remain peaceful.”
“We have heard reports in the media that more protests are planned today, and while we have no direct knowledge of such events, we pray that for the sake of our city, people remain peaceful to honor Adam’s memory and work constructively to promote reform,” the family said in a statement.
Information provided by The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
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