CHICAGO -- Video released Friday shows Chicago police firing repeatedly at a stolen car as it careens down the street away from them, then handcuffing the mortally wounded black 18-year-old who was at the wheel after a foot chase through a residential neighborhood.
None of the footage from last week shows the moment the suspected car thief was shot in the back. Shortly after the shots are fired, Paul O'Neal can be seen lying facedown on the ground in a backyard of a home, blood soaking through the back of his T-shirt.
An officer is heard angrily accusing the suspect of firing at police. Another officer asks, "They shot at us, too, right?" suggesting police believed they had been fired upon and that they did not know how many suspects were present.
No gun was recovered from the scene.
Chicago police officers tried to stop O'Neal about 7:30 p.m. July 28 in the South Shore neighborhood as he drove a Jaguar convertible reported stolen in suburban Bolingbrook, police said. Surveillance cameras tied O'Neal and three others to a string of car thefts, officials in the suburb said.
O'Neal struck two Chicago police vehicles in the sports car, and two officers fired at him while he was in the car, authorities said. O'Neal fled from the car, police said, and a third officer chased him behind a home. After O'Neal refused to stop, the officer shot him.
The recording catches the stolen car being pursued by officers as it blows through a stop sign. Before gunfire breaks out, the stolen car sideswipes one squad car and then smashes into another as officers open fire.
An officer can be heard explaining that the driver of the stolen car "almost hit my partner. I [expletive] shot at him." Another officer who apparently fired his weapon laments that he was going to be on "desk duty for 30 [expletive] days now."
Soon after the shooting, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson stripped three of the officers of their police powers after a preliminary investigation concluded they had violated department policy. On Friday, he promised that if the officers acted improperly, they would "be held accountable for their actions."
Authorities have not said specifically what policy the officers broke.
In February 2015, former Superintendent Garry McCarthy revised the department's policy on the use of deadly force to prohibit officers from "firing at or into a moving vehicle when the vehicle is the only force used against the sworn member or another person."
But the policy also says that officers "will not unreasonably endanger themselves or another person to conform to the restrictions of this directive," meaning they have the right to defend themselves if they or someone else are in imminent danger of being struck.
The officer who killed O'Neal said he believed O'Neal had fired at him and he returned fire with three to five rounds.
The moment of the shooting was not recorded because the officer's body camera was not operating at the time, police said.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the officer's body camera could have been deactivated when the stolen Jaguar slammed into his squad car and set off the air bags. He also pointed out that the body camera suddenly starts working after the shooting -- an indication that the officer, believing the episode was over, thought he was turning the camera off when he was actually turning it on.
"We don't believe there was any intentional misconduct with body cameras," he said.
Attorney Michael Oppenheimer, who represents O'Neal's family, alleged that the nonoperating body camera was part of a police effort to cover up what he called a "coldblooded murder."
At one point, an officer can be seen telling others that he did not know who was firing. Then another officer came up and said, "Hey," perhaps a reminder about the cameras. Whatever the intent, the officers immediately stopped talking.
An autopsy confirmed that O'Neal died of a gunshot wound in the back.
Oppenheimer said O'Neal's family viewed the video Friday, and relatives were so distraught that they left without speaking to the media.
Ja'Mal Green, an activist who identified himself as a family spokesman, repeatedly said there was no explanation other than murder to describe the shooting.
Oppenheimer said the video showed officers taking "street justice into their own hands."
"We just came from watching Chicago police officers execute Paul O'Neal," he told reporters. "It is one of the most horrific things I have seen, aside from being in a movie. These police officers decided to play judge, jury and executioner."
New Video Policy
In all, nine videos were released from two body cameras and at least one dashboard camera. It was the city's first release of video of a fatal police shooting under a new policy that calls for such material to be made public within 60 days. That and other policy changes represent an effort to restore public confidence in the department after video released last year showed a black teenager named Laquan McDonald getting shot 16 times by a white officer.
For more than a year, the department refused to make public video of an officer shooting McDonald, 17, releasing it in November only after being ordered to by a judge. Officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot McDonald, has been charged with murder and is awaiting trial.
That video sparked protests in Chicago and around the country, as McDonald joined a long list of black people whose deaths at the hands of police have prompted a national debate about law enforcement and race relations. The angry reaction to his death and the Chicago Police Department's handling of it became a political crisis for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, spurred promises of changes like expanded use of body cameras, and prompted the mayor to fire McCarthy, the police superintendent.
The U.S. Justice Department also launched an investigation to determine whether police had systematically violated residents' rights. Federally enforced changes could come from that ongoing investigation.
Sharon Fairley, the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, the agency that investigates Chicago police misconduct, called the footage "shocking and disturbing." She did not elaborate.
But in a statement, she urged people to remember that the video is just one among many pieces of evidence "to be gathered and analyzed when conducting a fair and thorough assessment of the conduct of police officers in performing their duties."
The agency is also being overhauled after a recent Chicago Tribune investigation showed that it has long conducted superficial investigations and recommended light punishments.
Emanuel has announced plans to abolish the agency and replace it with a more effective department, though neither he nor his allies have announced any details. Meanwhile Fairley, a former federal prosecutor, has sought to overhaul the department even as it faces its demise.
Under Fairley, who was appointed after the McDonald video's release, the agency has ruled more police shootings unjustified in the past two months than it had in the prior nine years.
Two of the shootings the review authority recently ruled unjustified involved officers shooting at vehicles, as they appear to have done in O'Neal's case. In both of the shootings ruled unjustified, the agency determined the officers faced no serious danger when they fired.
Information for this article was contributed by Don Babwin of The Associated Press; by Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times; and by Dan Hinkel of the Chicago Tribune.
A Section on 08/06/2016