THE EMBATTLED CITY of Chicago has released a video in yet another controversial case of a black teenager shot dead by a white police officer.
Filmed from a significant distance, the footage does not clearly show the moment in which Cedrick Chatman, 17, is shot.
But it does show him running from police in broad daylight before falling dead in the street.
The officer who fatally shot him said he opened fire out of fear for his life after Chatman turned and appeared to pull out a gun.
An iPhone case was later found near his body.
‘No reason’
A former investigator with the city’s Independent Police Review Authority disputed the officer’s assertion and said he had no reason to shoot someone who was running away.
He also says he is suing the city for wrongful dismissal and that he was ordered to soften his findings in six cases, including Chatman’s 2013 shooting.
“He waited until he had clear shot, and then he took one,” Lorenzo Davis told the New York Times.
That’s what it looked like to me.
Police tactics and racism have been the subject of an intense national debate since violent protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 over the shooting death of another black teen, 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Warning: The video contains graphic footage. The incident takes place from 5.30 in the video.
The Chatman video comes two weeks after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a major overhaul of the city’s police force in the wake of a series of fatal shootings which sparked mass protests.
The US Department of Justice launched an investigation last month into how Chicago police use force citing the death of black teenager Laquan McDonald who was shot 16 times as he was walking away from officers in October 2014.
Prosecutors said officer Jason Van Dyke – who pleaded not guilty to murder charges last month – shot McDonald just 30 seconds after his cruiser pulled up to the scene and six seconds after stepping out of it.
The department came under scrutiny again late last month after police killed two more of the city’s African American residents when a father called for help with his “mentally disturbed” son.
The responding officer shot at the young man as he walked down the stairs while holding a baseball bat. The bullets also struck and killed a downstairs neighbor – a mother of five – who had answered the door.
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