Cops Shoot at a Moving Car in the Latest Chicago Police Killing Videos

Last Thursday, Paul O'Neal led Chicago police on a high-speed chase while behind the wheel of a stolen Jaguar. When he came close to striking an officer's vehicle, cops proceeded to shoot at the fleeing car from behind, which didn't stop until it crashed into another cop car. That's when the teenager got out and ran behind a house.

He never remerged, and a medical examiner has since said O'Neal, who was just 18, was shot in the back, as the New York Times reports.

Nine videos depicting the moments leading up to O'Neal's death on July 28 were released by city officials Friday. On its face, the tragedy seems like just the latest instance of an unarmed black man dying at the hands of trigger-happy American cops, though speed of its publication does hint at meager progress in how one city plagued by police violence is addressing officer conduct.

After all, a Chicago cop shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in late 2014, and it took more than a year—and a judge's order—to produce dash-cam footage of the incident. The officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with first-degree murder and is set to go on trial soon, though there have been disputes about who exactly should serve as prosecutor. The comparatively swift turnaround time in the O'Neal shooting could be viewed as progress in terms of transparency—or as just the latest example of Chicago cops' relentless assault on the city's black community.

Eddie Johnson, the Chicago police superintendent who took over not long after the McDonald footage went public, was quick to say his officers seem to have violated departmental policy. (They have been deprived of their official powers as the investigation unfolds.) He may have been referring to the fact that the footage clearly shows officers firing at O'Neal's moving car, even though it is the sole threat in play—a practice that's been discouraged by the Department of Justice and barred by Chicago Police Department rules, if not US case law.

Perhaps less heartening is O'Neal's family and the public still don't have footage of the teen's actual death—instead, the footage catches up to him after he was shot and is being cuffed by officers. (The cops can be heard talking about O'Neal as if he shot them, even though he was unarmed: "They shot at us, too, right?" one asks.) The officer who fired the fatal bullet was wearing a body camera, but the official story is that it did not record.

For his part, Michael Oppenheimer, the attorney representing the O'Neal family, claims this lacuna represents a deliberate cover-up by the department, but that the missing piece doesn't detract from the horror of what we've already seen.

"We just came from watching Chicago police officers execute Paul O'Neal," he said Friday. "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."

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