Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says video of Adam Toledo’s fatal shooting by police ‘incredibly difficult to watch’
Lori Lightfoot #LoriLightfoot
Hours before city officials released video of a police officer shooting 13-year old Adam Toledo, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday asked Chicago residents to withhold judgment and again called for peace.
The mayor choked back tears as she discussed the city’s endemic gun violence, saying, “We can’t have that be what young people experience in our city.
“Simply put, we failed Adam,” she said during a City Hall news conference.
Lightfoot recounted how, two weeks ago, “a tragedy occurred that left a child dead, a mother in mourning and a family in crisis.”
“I have seen those videos, and let me just say they are incredibly difficult to watch, particularly at the end,” Lightfoot said.
Toledo was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer in the early morning hours of March 29 in a Little Village alley after a foot pursuit, touching off protests and demonstrations in the neighborhood. A seventh grader at Gary Elementary School in Little Village, Toledo is the youngest person fatally shot by Chicago police in years.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates all shootings by police, released video of the shooting and other materials on Thursday.
“It was excruciating. There are several videos that kind of start at the beginning of the episode, but watching the body cam footage which shows young Adam after he was shot is extremely difficult,” Lightfoot said. “I would just say, and I’ve said this to a number of people on my staff … as a mom, this is not something you want children to see.”
The video from the body-worn camera of the officer who fires the shot captures the instant Toledo was struck, moments after the officer begins chasing the teen down the alley. The officer can be heard to shout, “show me your (expletive) hands!” followed by “drop it!” with a flickering flashlight on Toledo as he starts to turn around.
The teen can be seen stopped near an opening in a fence as he turned, and he appeared to start lifting his hands. As a shot is heard, the teen appeared to have his hands apart, above his waist, approaching shoulder level. On the grainy and shaky video, his hands appear to be empty at the moment the officer shoots him.
Later in the video, an officer can be seen shining a flashlight onto a pistol behind the fence where Toledo had been standing.
In a view from a camera across a nearby parking lot, aimed at the alley from behind that fence, the teen can be seen running down the alley from a distance. As he stops at the gap where he was eventually shot, his right arm can be seen moving behind the fence, making an underhanded throwing motion toward the area where the gun is later recovered, just before he turns back toward the officer and slumps to the ground.
Police have previously said a weapon was recovered at the scene, as have Cook County prosecutors. Police reiterated that Thursday, when they showed the video footage to reporters earlier in the afternoon ahead of COPA’s release.
Brendan Deenihan, CPD’s chief of detectives, showed a compilation of video from a camera at nearby Farragut Career Academy High School, a neighborhood church and the shooting officer’s body camera.
Deenihan said less than a second elapsed from when Deenihan said the officer’s body camera showed a gun in Toledo’s hand to the time the officer fired. Deenihan would not answer any questions about the shooting during the briefing.
A lawyer for the officer who fired the shot, Tim Grace, said in his viewing, Toledo had a gun at the time he was confronted.
“At this point the officer was faced with a deadly force situation and all attempts to deescalate had failed,” Grace wrote in an emailed statement, adding that non-lethal force would not have been effective or safe for the officer. “The officer had no place to take cover or concealment, the gun was being (orientated) in his direction and he was left with no other option.”
As more people see the footage, Lightfoot said Thursday, they should think about what Toledo and his family have experienced “since they learned of his passing. I also ask that each of us give them space to breathe.”
“Even as our understanding of this incident continues to evolve, this remains a complicated and nuanced story,” Lightfoot said. “We all must proceed with deep empathy and calm and, importantly, peace.”
Reflecting on the shooting, which she called a tragedy, Lightfoot said two facts are clear.
“First, in the middle of the night, this child was in contact with an adult who had a gun, and then ended up being shot and killed by a police officer,” Lightfoot said. “(Second) there are too many young people in our city, boys and girls alike, who have been left vulnerable by systemic failures that we simply must fix.”
Lightfoot also called for federal gun control, saying the city has “too many damn guns” on the street. She also said it’s important to improve police-community relations, though her administration has been criticized for not delivering key reforms such as civilian oversight of police.
Lightfoot has been careful to avoid commenting directly on the video.
The mayor has a long, complicated history in the local police reform movement.
She’s a former federal prosecutor who headed the board that oversees police discipline and chaired the Police Accountability Task Force formed by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel after white police Officer Jason Van Dyke shot and killed Black teenager Laquan McDonald. But she is often criticized by activists as being pro-police, and her prior stints overseeing police discipline have led to criticism that she didn’t do enough to stamp out bad cops or troubled practices.
Earlier this month, Lightfoot said she wanted the Police Department to implement a new foot pursuit policy before summer.
Lightfoot’s call for police policy changes comes four years after the U.S. Justice Department recommended in a report about CPD’s practices that it adopt a foot pursuit policy. None has been put into place, despite concerns about how dangerous foot pursuits can be for the officers and the public.
A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2016 found that foot chases played a role in more than a third of the 235 police shooting cases in the city from 2010 through 2015 that ended with someone wounded or killed. In 2017, the Justice Department’s investigation into Chicago’s police practices noted that foot pursuits are “inherently dangerous and present substantial risks to officers and the public.”
In 2018, Lightfoot criticized the draft of a court-ordered consent decree the Chicago Police Department now finds itself under for saying a determination on whether a new policy was needed could wait until 2021. While Lightfoot has said a foot pursuit policy can’t be pushed off “for another day,” she hadn’t prioritized the issue in the nearly two years since becoming mayor.
But, she said, CPD established guidelines for foot pursuits in February. Last month, the consent decree’s independent monitor completed an assessment of data related to Chicago police foot pursuits and determined that the department should adopt a foot pursuit policy.
The monitor found that foot pursuits in which officers used force that did or could have resulted in death had increased since the previous review — up from 3% to 7.7%. The monitor also found that the Police Department had missed 60% of its most recent deadlines to make reforms.
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Earlier Thursday, Lightfoot and lawyers for the Toledo family issued a joint statement calling for calm as the city prepares to release video of the teen’s fatal police shooting Thursday.
“We acknowledge that the release of this video is the first step in the process toward the healing of the family, the community and our city,” the joint statement between Lightfoot and Toledo’s family’s lawyers said. “We understand that the release of this video will be incredibly painful and elicit an emotional response to all who view it, and we ask that people express themselves peacefully.”
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle also urged peaceful demonstrations during Thursday remarks to reporters after a Board of Commissioners meeting.
“It’s a terrible tragedy whenever we lose a young person like this,” Preckwinkle, who said she has not seen the video, said. “I know that there will be people who see this video, whatever is in it, and will be disappointed and angry, and I just hope and pray that if they feel the need to express themselves about this tragedy that they do so in a peaceful manner.”
On Saturday, Cook County prosecutors accused Ruben Roman, 21, of firing a gun as he stood next to Toledo, charging him with felonies including child endangerment, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm after being arrested Friday.
Check back for updates.
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