Dec. 03--As Chicago reels from public images of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being fatally shot by a police officer, another court battle is being waged over the secrecy of footage purportedly showing another black teenager being fatally shot by a white cop almost three years ago.
Attorneys said surveillance cameras captured a police officer shooting 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman as he fled from officers in the South Shore neighborhood in January 2013. Chatman had only a black iPhone box in his hand, a lawyer who represents Chatman's mother said in a federal lawsuit.
As part of the court fight, city attorneys have succeeded in keeping the videos under a protective order and out of public view. In the latest bid to make the videos public, attorney Brian Coffman, who represents Chatman's mother, filed a motion Wednesday seeking to overturn a judge's order keeping the footage confidential.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown sided with the city in her decision Nov. 19 -- the same day a Cook County judge ordered the McDonald shooting videos to be made public.
"When Judge Brown made her ruling, she was worried about the jury pool being tainted and the citizens of Chicago being traumatized by this," Coffman said. "Unfortunately, now seeing the (McDonald) video, that (concern) doesn't exist anymore. There needs to be transparency with what has gone on with the city of Chicago and its police officers, and also the investigation into it."
City Law Department officials did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment. Coffman said the officer had never been disciplined for the shooting, but a police department spokesman could not be reached to confirm that.
The shooting took place Jan. 7, 2013, near East 75th Street and South Jeffery Avenue. Several cameras outside a nearby food market and at South Shore High School recorded different portions of what happened, according to Coffman and a report by the Independent Police Review Authority.
Officers responding to a report of a carjacking at 1:46 p.m. stopped the car Chatman was driving. Police said that as the two plainclothes officers approached, Chatman ran south on Jeffery Avenue with one of the officers trailing close behind. The second officer -- identified as Kevin Fry in the lawsuit -- ran diagonally to try to cut off Chatman's path, police said.
At some point, Chatman "pointed a dark object back toward the officers as he continued to run," according to IPRA. Fry, fearing for his life, fired four shots, striking Chatman once each in the right side of his body and right forearm, IPRA said in its report. He later died from his injuries.
The dark object police recovered at the scene was a black iPhone box authorities believe he obtained from the carjacking, according to IPRA.
