Latino lawyers and community leaders in Chicago plan to call on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the fatal shooting of a 13-year-old Hispanic boy by a police officer late last month, according to reports.
The demand for a federal probe in the death of Adam Toledo comes as Mayor Lori Lightfoot faces additional pressure to order changes to policing in Chicago, including an end to foot pursuits by officers, and to seek federal COVID relief dollars to help youths in the troubled neighborhood where the boy grew up.
The shooting that killed Adam occurred in the predawn hours of March 29 as Chicago Police Officer Eric Stillman responded to a call of shots fired in Little Village, a predominantly Latino neighborhood on the city’s West Side. Police bodycam video released last week shows Stillman, who is white, chasing Adam into a dark alleyway and ordering him to show his hands.
The teen appeared to drop a handgun and begin raising his hands in the air to surrender less than a split-second before Stillman opened fire and killed the boy with a single shot to the chest, the footage showed.
Moments later, a handgun can be seen lying on the ground on the other side of a fence where Adam was mortally wounded. The gun, however, never appears near Adam as officers administered chest compressions to save his life.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
The video, which seemed to contradict the official police version of events, sparked outrage and days of protests throughout Chicago, a city with a long history of brutality and racism that has fomented distrust among the city’s many Black and Hispanic residents.
The case 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, Marcellis Stinnette, an unarmed Black teenager, was killed and the mother of his baby wounded after police opened fire on a “suspicious vehicle” in Waukegan, a suburb of Chicago, sparking more outrage in the community.
Reports say Chicago police have developed a reputation for suppressing videos that have the potential to cast the department in a bad light. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability review board initially said it couldn’t release video of Adam’s shooting because it involved a minor, but it changed course after the mayor and police superintendent agreed to the community’s demands.
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The Toledo shooting case was even more notable because it converged with separate protests in the Minneapolis area over the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, which occurred April 11 just miles away from the trial of former Officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged in the death of George Floyd.
Lightfoot has said the city must allow its independent review agency to complete its investigation, but that she understands “that the surge of outrage around it is rooted in a long legacy of trauma in our city and country around police violence.”
Chicago agreed to hundreds of changes in policing under a consent decree approved by a federal judge in 2019 after a Justice Department investigation found a record of racism and abuse by Chicago police, going back decades. The investigation was prompted by the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald, a Black 16-year-old, by a white officer. Jason Van Dyke was later convicted of murder for shooting the teen 16 times, video of which the city fought to suppress.
An independent monitor’s report last month showed the city has made some progress on putting changes in place, but that significant work remains undone.
Lightfoot said last week she wants the police department to enact a new foot pursuit policy before summer.
The groups calling for changes Tuesday include the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois and the Pilsen Law Center.
Information provided by The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
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