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Three Chicago police officers have been stripped of their law enforcement authority after shooting and killing a young Black man with a bullet to his back in an incident where “departmental policies may have been violated,” police said Saturday.
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The three policemen shot and killed the 18-year-old on Thursday after a car chase where he allegedly sideswiped a squad car and another vehicle with a stolen Jaguar he was driving as police tried to arrest him, the Chicago Police Department said in a statement.
An autopsy on the man, identified as Paul O'Neal, determined he died from a gunshot wound to the back, according to records from the Cook County medical examiner.
The officers involved were wearing body cameras and the police vehicles had their cameras activated, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The videos have not been released the public. It remained unclear if a weapon was recovered at the scene of the incident on Thursday.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson reviewed the incident on Friday, then relieved two of the officers of their authority and assigned them administrative positions, pending the outcome of internal and Independent Police Review Authority investigations, the department said in a statement. On Saturday, following release of the autopsy report, Johnson relieved the third officer of his police powers.
The swift actions, which go beyond mere suspensions from active police duty, suggested the actions by the officers were egregious.
The steps by the department were also likely influenced by the police superintendent's stated interest in addressing incidents where there is an apparent unjustified use of deadly force.
Johnson's stance was itself prompted by intense protests throughout the United States demanding justice in police shootings of Black men.
Chicago police in particular have come under criticism for the October 2014 slaying of Laquan McDonald, 17, who was shot 16 times by an officer, as well as clandestine site that, according to a Guardian investigation, tortures and disappears those detained for interrogation without access to lawyers or public notice.
Last week, the Independent Police Review Authority (IRPA) ruled that Chicago police used unjustified force last year when they shot and wounded a black suspect in an alleged drug transaction who drove off in his car when officers tried to stop him.
Three days after that incident, the department revised its deadly force policy, barring officers from shooting at moving vehicles if no other weapons were being used against police.
The three officers involved remain a part of the police force and have been “assigned to administrative positions” according to a department statement.
Their suspensions are unlikely to satisfy anti-police brutality activists who have sought criminal prosecutions of police who kill Black men with apparent impunity.
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