CHICAGO – Reverting its course after pressure from city officials and the public, the police department’s supervisory board announced on Friday that it would release a video of a policeman’s body shot dead at a 13-year-old boy in the chest.
The Chicago Police Department’s civil inspection office said on Thursday it could not release the video because the victim was a minor.
The boy, Adam Toledo, was shot in the chest and killed on Monday morning after authorities were alerted to possible shots in the neighborhood of Little Village, a predominantly Latin community.
Adam was shot in an alley after a foot chase, according to a statement from the police department, which did not disclose the policeman’s name. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene, the department said.
The police department says a gun was recovered at the scene.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police superintendent David Brown issued statements on Thursday asking the Civil Police Accountability Office to release the video, but the office said in a statement that it could not do so legally because the victim was a minor .
Adam was the third person shot by the Chicago police this week, according to the NBC affiliate WMAQ in Chicago. The two previous shots took place on Wednesday.
The TV station obtained police radio audio in which officers were instructed to turn off the body’s cameras three times, just seven minutes after being called to the scene.
In 2019, a judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by the WMAQ that the law cited by the city in its argument not to disclose the video applied only to victims who survived police misconduct and not to minors who were victims of fatal police misconduct.
The WMAQ had previously said it would apply for the Freedom of Information Act to release the video from the body camera.
The shooting came months after the city was examined to see how it handled the police camera video showing a woman, Anjanette Young, being handcuffed while naked in her home in 2019, in what the police department called an operation unsuccessful.