CHICAGO (AP) — A grainy dashcam video shows Ronald Johnson III running across a street at night with several officers in pursuit. One officer begins shooting — fire flaring from the barrel — as Johnson runs. Prosecutors say he was hit just as his image goes out of view.
At a news conference Monday, Assistant State’s Attorney Lynn McCarthy slowed down the video to show what she says is a gun in the 25-year-old black man’s hand. She says it is a semiautomatic pistol with 12 live rounds loaded.
No audio was captured in the video, as in an earlier police shooting case. The lack of audio in the video showing the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald raised questions about whether officers might have switched audio off intentionally to conceal their actions.
McCarthy says officers repeatedly shouted at Johnson to stop and drop his weapon but that he ignored these commands.
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11:55 a.m.
A Chicago police officer will not be charged in the fatal shooting of a black man in an incident captured by a squad car’s dashcam.
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced Monday that she’s not charging Officer George Hernandez in the shooting death of Ronald Johnson III in October 2014. Less than two weeks ago another officer was charged in the fatal shooting of a black man recorded by a squad car dashcam.
Last month, Alvarez charged Jason Van Dyke with first-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times.
Police say the 25-year-old Johnson pointed a gun at officers before Hernandez shot him in the back. Johnson’s mother, who has been pressing the city to release the video, says it shows her son was running away from officers when he was shot.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the video should be released this week.
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Police are absolutely “domestic terrorists”…literally. They routinely, with impunity, kill black citizens in order to instill fear and terror among an entire segment of society. They want “those people” to live in constant fear that a bullet could be on the way at any time; all designed to keep minorities in their place.
Well they seem to usually get off scot free when they shoot a black person so for the ones that don’t care, they can just shoot them till dead, do a little bit of paperwork, have a brief internal interview, then get back to driving around looking for an open donut shop.
EDIT: Sometimes they don’t wait to get cleared and/or do it on their own time…oh wait he didn’t mean to shoot it, it shot off while he was polishing it…wait that was his dick…never mind…
I’m waiting to see the day when a citizen shoots and kills a cop, and gets off for self-defense. Seems like we’re rapidly approaching that day. The comment that LEO’s are domestic terrorists is spot on. They intentionally commit acts of violence to assert their authority and pacify a terrorized population.
Whereas a bunch of white guys in Nevada actually point their guns at the feds, nothing happens. Now, clearly, the young man should have put down his gun if he did, in fact, have one, but to kill him with impunity while in case after case of white guys strutting around with guns, no one is shot or even arrested has only one explanation, and that is the deeply racist nature of our law enforcement infrastructure. It goes beyond the “goodness” of individuals to the overwhelming cultural narratives that control behavior.
Tupac Shakur shot two cops and walked due to a self defense claim. There are dozens of examples of people shooting police and successfully claiming self-defense. Indiana even has a law on the books that makes it specifically legal to shoot cops to defend yourself or your property.
"(i) A person is justified in using reasonable
force against a public servant if the person reasonably believes the
force is necessary to:
(1) protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force;
(2) prevent or terminate the public servant’s
unlawful entry of or attack on the person’s dwelling, curtilage, or
occupied motor vehicle; or
(3) prevent or terminate the public servant’s
unlawful trespass on or criminal interference with property lawfully in
the person’s possession, lawfully in possession of a member of the
person’s immediate family, or belonging to a person whose property the
person has authority to protect"