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Johnson told a
news conference it was against departmental policy to fire at or
into a moving car when the vehicle was the only potential use of
force by a suspect, and police were taking a hard look at
training and tactics following the shooting.
Authorities on Friday released videos that captured the moments
before and after police shot Paul O'Neal, 18, on July 28, but
not the shooting itself because a police officer's body camera
was not recording. No firearms were found on O'Neal, who was
shot in the back, according to police.
Johnson was named in March to lead the department, which is
facing accusations of racism and a federal investigation into
its practices after the city waited more than a year to release
video of a separate 2014 fatal shooting by officers.
On Saturday, he said the ongoing investigation prevented him
from discussing details about the O'Neal shooting.
"I was concerned by some of the things that I saw on the videos
and that is why we took such a swift action that we did last
week to relieve the three officers of their police powers,"
Johnson said.
The video footage released on Friday shows two officers firing
at a stolen car driven by O'Neal after it sped past them, the
car crashing into a police car, and O'Neal running into a
backyard where he was shot. It does not show the shooting.
Johnson said the lack of a body-camera video of the O'Neal
shooting is under investigation, though he noted that the
officers in that police district had the cameras for only about
a week before the shooting.
Civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson said the lack of a
complete video accounting of O'Neal's shooting showed a cover-up
and a lawyer for O'Neal's family called for a special prosecutor
to investigate the killing.
The union representing Chicago police officers urged the public
not to rush to judgment.
Dozens of protesters demanding swift action against the officers
involved in O'Neal's shooting demonstrated outside Chicago
police headquarters on Friday night.
A string of high-profile killings of black men by police in
various U.S. cities in the past two years has renewed a national
debate about racial discrimination in the criminal justice
system and given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Leslie Adler and Paul
Simao)
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