CHICAGO – A definitive statement from the Chicago Police Department about an officer's fatal shooting of two people — one by accident — came Saturday night, 16 hours after the incident.
But when it did arrive, the comments from interim Superintendent John Escalante were notable. In the news release, Escalante not only announced a major policy shift on returning officers to duty after a shooting, he also took the unusual step to acknowledge that an innocent victim had been hit by an errant police bullet.
"The 55-year-old female victim was accidentally struck and tragically killed," the statement read. "The department extends its deepest condolences to the victim's family and friends."
In contrast, the 2012 department statement on the fatal shooting of Rekia Boyd, 22, who also was an unintended target of a police shooting, simply noted that a female had "sustained a gunshot wound."
Both the policy announcement and Escalante's condolences reflect the emerging reality for the Chicago Police Department in the wake of last month's release of video of a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager. The 2014 dash-cam video showed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald carrying a pocket knife and walking away from officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot 16 rounds at the teenager within seconds of arriving at the scene and now faces first-degree murder charges.
The video, which was released only after a judge's order, has led to swift changes. The U.S. Justice Department has launched a civil rights investigation into excessive force, an inquiry that is expected to take at least a year. Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was fired, and the head of the independent agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct was forced out. Mayor Rahm Emanuel publicly apologized.
The shooting about 4:30 a.m. Saturday was the department's first lethal use of force since the McDonald video was released, providing a glimpse of how it is responding to the biggest crisis of Emanuel's tenure.
Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Sunday that Escalante and his command staff had started working on the policy change a week and a half ago. The change means that officers involved in shootings will be shifted to mandatory administrative duty, returning to their assigned bureau for desk duty for 30 days. The policy had been that officers generally had three days to see a counselor and be cleared for return to duty unless it was determined that they needed more time off.
But in the wake of learning details from the West Side shooting, Escalante also insisted that the statement acknowledge the accidental killing of Bettie Jones, Guglielmi said. "It was a tragic loss of life. The superintendent was adamant that the department express our deepest condolences," he said.
In the Saturday shooting on Erie, officers were responding to a domestic violence call of a man wielding a bat. Police shot and killed Quintonio LeGrier, a 19-year-old engineering student, after he became combative with them, the Chicago police statement said. During the altercation, Jones, 55, a mother of five who lived downstairs from LeGrier's father, was shot and killed by accident.
