Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson late Friday relieved two officers of their police powers following a police-involved shooting that left a suspect dead.
(Yahoo)- Although the Thursday night shooting of 18-year-old Paul O’Neal of Chicago remains under investigation, departmental policies may have been violated by the officers, said department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. He added that the department is still reviewing the actions of a third officer involved in the shooting.
The shooting occurred during a stolen vehicle investigation.
Chicago police said that officers stopped a stolen Jaguar convertible Thursday evening in the city’s South Shore neighborhood and were exiting their own vehicle when the driver sped away, sideswiping a squad car and a parked vehicle in the process.
The department said that two officers fired their weapons, wounding O’Neal, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. The department said some officers were injured, but that their injuries were not considered life-threatening.
“At this moment the department has, unfortunately, more questions than we do answers,” Guglielmi said.
The handling of officer-involved shootings has come under intense scrutiny since the release last November of a video that shows a white officer fatally shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. That shooting, and the initial statements by a union spokesman about McDonald lunging at police that turned out to contradict what was on the video, raised serious questions about what the public was being told about police shootings.