Mayor Lori Lightfoot choked back tears Thursday as she discussed the video footage of a Chicago police officer fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo in a Little Village alley two weeks ago.
Lightfoot called for peace and urged people to withhold judgment on the shooting, which was graphically captured on police bodycam footage. She also bemoaned the nation’s gun laws and the city’s endemic gun violence.
“Simply put, we failed Adam,” Lightfoot said during a City Hall news conference before the video was released to the public.
Toledo was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer in the early morning hours of March 29 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.
Thursday’s release of the video footage by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates all shootings by police, had been highly anticipated throughout the city. And when it was made public, politicians were quick to react with opinions ranging from condemnation of Chicago police for Toledo’s death to an ardent defense of the officer’s split-second decision to shoot.
Somewhere in between, political leaders released statements blaming the “system” at large for Toledo’s death, an approach that is more open to interpretation and did not specifically criticize police.
The video released Thursday 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 stopping near an opening in a fence as he turns and he appears to start lifting his hands. As a shot is heard, the teen appears to have his hands apart, above his waist, approaching shoulder level.
On a frame-by-frame viewing, a pistol-shaped object appears to be visible in Toledo’s right hand behind his back as he pauses near the opening in the fence and turns his head toward the officer. 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.
On Saturday, Cook County prosecutors accused Ruben Roman, 21, of firing a gun as he stood next to Toledo that night, charging him with felonies including child endangerment, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm after being arrested Friday.
“I have seen those videos, and let me just say they are incredibly difficult to watch, particularly at the end,” said Lightfoot, who has been careful to avoid commenting directly on the video.
As more people see the footage, Lightfoot said, they should think about what Toledo and his family have experienced.
“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.”
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle also urged peaceful demonstrations during Thursday remarks to reporters after a Board of Commissioners meeting and before the video was released.
In a statement later Thursday evening, Preckwinkle wrote, “Adam Toledo was just a child and should still be alive. We must demand justice and accountability for this tragedy and address the law enforcement system that have allowed this to happen time and time again.”
Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, who chairs the council’s Black Caucus, called it “an unfortunate incident that led to this child losing his life.”
“There’s a lot of teachable moments, do’s and don’ts in dealing with the police,” Ervin said after watching the video.
“It’s a case of just unfortunate circumstances that led to this kid losing his life. But this was not Laquan McDonald,” Ervin said, referring to the 2014 fatal shooting of the Black teen by white police officer Jason Van Dyke. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder in the McDonald shooting.
Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, however, balked at the calls for peace after viewing what she described as such a “not justifiable” police shooting.
“You did not have to shoot that kid,” Taylor said. “And then y’all got the nerve to ask us for peace. When do Black and brown people get peace? When do I get to wake up and not worry about if my sons are next, or my daughters? When?”
Taylor called for the officer who shot Toledo to be stripped of their powers and face criminal charges. She also said Lightfoot must swiftly pass a civilian oversight plan for police being pushed by a bloc of aldermen, and a proposed ordinance significantly tightening rules for search warrants following the wrongful raid of Anjanette Young’s home.
“The right thing to do is to pass these ordinances,” Taylor said. “That will make it right for me, and everything else we can work out. But if she doesn’t, no, she is not fit to stay, no. No. Ain’t no ifs, ands or buts about it.”
Other officials were split over their reactions to the video.
First-term Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, said the shooting is a “familiar story” where “police will shoot first and then ask questions.
“What I saw was a kid that was told to stop and show his hands and in the process of putting his arms up he got shot,” Rodriguez Sanchez said. “I saw a scared 13-year-old whose face looks like my six-year-old.”
North Side Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, tweeted of Toledo: “He was told to stop. He stopped. He was told to raise his hands. He raised his hands. He was a scared 13-year-old, who listened and complied.”
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Ald. George Cardenas, 12th, in whose ward the incident took place, called the shooting a tragedy, but said he can’t fault the officer.
“It’s a tragedy that it happened. It’s a tragedy (Toledo) ends up with a gun in his hand,” Cardenas said. “But based on all the frames of the video I saw, I can’t fault anybody. It was a split-second decision.”
Northwest Side Ald. Nick Sposato, 38th, said the officer did the best he could in a chaotic situation. “He responds to shots fired on the ShotSpotter, somebody takes off down the alley and he’s chasing him, trying to make split second decisions,” Sposato said.
“People say it seems like the kid threw away the gun, sure, maybe you can say that now when you see it on the video, but when he turned around there’s no way that officer could have known that. From everything I hear, he’s a good cop. You can see him doing everything he can on the video to help the kid. ‘Stay with me, stay with me.’ In my mind, the officer’s actions were totally justified.”
Southwest Side Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, said the officer “did what his training taught him to do” by pursuing an armed suspect.
“The whole situation is horrible but at the end of the day we have a situation where an officer in 8/10ths of a second had to make a decision,” Lopez said. “He made a decision, he showed restraint, and he still tried to save that young man’s life.”
Reflecting on the shooting Lightfoot also blamed the system and 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.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement that his heart goes out to Toledo’s family and those who loved him.
“This is a moment that calls for justice for our children and accountability in all our public institutions,” Pritzker said. “The State of Illinois is committed to this work, whether it is transforming our justice system or investing in communities to create durable and long-term progress.”
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in a statement said COPA’s investigation should “move forward in a fair and expeditious manner.”
“From Laquan McDonald to Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Sandra Bland, and tragically many other Black and Brown men and women whose names we do not know, their lives have been lost to brutal acts of racial injustice. The evidence shows that we are dealing with a system of justice that isn’t being applied equally—and we need to change that,” Durbin said in the statement. “As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’m committed to meeting this historic moment with real change.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth also tweeted a statement offering condolences to the Toledo family.
“No parent should ever have to lose a child like that and no child’s life should end like that. Ever. If we’re to truly be the Land of the Free, every single American must feel safe, must be able to live,” Duckworth said.
For her part, 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.
Still, 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 Van Dyke, a white police officer, shot and killed McDonald, a Black teen. 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.
Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella contributed.
