Chicago mayor urges calm amid release of shooting video

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) on Thursday urged the public to remain calm and peaceful ahead of the release of body camera footage of a March incident where police fatally shot a 13-year-old who authorities say ran from officers while holding a handgun.

During a news conference before the release of the footage, Lightfoot said “we all must proceed with deep empathy and calm, and importantly, peace.”

On March 29, Adam Toledo was shot by a Chicago officer in what police called an “armed confrontation.”

Toledo’s family also issued a statement urging protesters to “remain peaceful,” according to The Associated Press.

The footage was later released by Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) on Thursday afternoon, which showed an officer chasing Toledo down an alleyway while yelling “stop right f—ing now” before Toledo stops at a large gap in some wooden fencing.

The officer, whose name has not been released, is then heard yelling “show me your f—ing hands,” and Toledo is seen slowly turning to the officer with both of his hands raised.

Though a gun is not clearly visible in Toledo’s hand, the officer yells “drop it” twice before shooting Toledo once in the chest. The young teen then falls to the ground, and a weapon is not visible on the ground as other officers arrive and begin CPR.

Lightfoot, while choking up at times, denounced the “long legacy of police violence and police misconduct” in Chicago and other parts of the country that she said has left “too many residents, especially those who are Black and brown, in a constant state of fear and pain.”

She went on to say that “this legacy has only been exacerbated by the many challenges that have hit us as a city, and individually, over this past year alone,” citing the coronavirus pandemic, economic crisis and surge in civil unrest.

Lightfoot also mentioned the “systemic failures that we simply must fix,” which she said leave young people in vulnerable positions.

“We live in a city that is traumatized by a long history of police violence and misconduct,” Lightfoot 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,” she continued.

These comments came hours after Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability announced it would release body camera footage and other material surrounding the fatal shooting, including “3rd party video, OEMC transmissions, ShotSpotter recordings, Case Incident, Tactical Response and Arrest Reports.”

The attention around Toledo’s death also comes amid a national conversation regarding policing in America, especially in the Black community, following the killings of George Floyd and Daunte Wright by police.

On Thursday, the defense rested its case in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who is charged with killing Floyd after kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes.

On Wednesday, Washington County Attorney Peter Orput confirmed to The New York Times that the police officer who shot Wright, 20 — who was later identified as Kim Potter — was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter.

The Brooklyn Center, Minn., police chief, who later resigned following Wright’s death, said he believed that Potter meant to grab her stun gun, but mistakenly pulled her handgun instead.