On Monday evening, Chicago’s NBC5 reported that the city’s police officers in the 11th and 15th districts received a safety bulletin, which stated that “members of three west side street gangs held a meeting … to discuss a plot to shoot officers, employing a sniper and possibly automatic weapons.” Officers were urged to stay off the streets. The warning comes ten days after 18-year-old Paul O’Neal was killed in an officer-involved shooting in the South Shore neighborhood. Footage released by the Chicago PD shows how O’Neal was speeding away from police when they opened fire at his car, causing him to crash into a police car. When he got out of the car to run, an officer chased him behind a neighborhood home and shot him. O’Neal was unarmed.
Though the police released the video only a week after the fact — a turnaround time that is unusually high for the CPD — it is missing one very important detail: footage from the body camera of the officer who shot O’Neal. Though O’Neal’s attorney maintains that the officer intentionally kept his camera switched off, investigators believe it is possible that the officer turned his camera off by mistake. The body camera had been issued only eight days prior to the shooting.
After his camera was switched back on, the officer who shot O’Neal can be heard saying, “I think I shot that [expletive] man!” and “pray to God that nothing happens to him!” Later, he tells his fellow officers, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to that [expletive] guy, but the way things are going, I’m going to be [expletive] crucified!” Protests against the Chicago Police Department are ongoing.
(Via NBC 5 Chicago)