Newly released video shows a Chicago police officer firing at an SUV with heavily tinted windows that was wanted in the shooting of an off-duty officer in Irving Park in September.
The officer and his partner had stopped the SUV near the 5000 block of West Lawrence Avenue on Sept. 20, but it sped off as the two approached, according to the video.
One of the officers fires at the passenger side of the SUV, which apparently just misses the other officer as it squeezes between two police cars and escapes onto the Kennedy Expressway.
No one in the SUV was apparently hit, according to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which released the videos and reports on the shooting.
Police department policy generally prohibits officers from firing at and into moving cars “unless such force is a last resort and necessary ... to protect against an imminent threat.”
A police report on the shooting uses almost that exact language is describing the officer’s actions. It states that the officer “discharged his firearm at the offending vehicle as a last resort to protect against an imminent threat” to his partner.
COPA said it was continuing to investigate the incident.
The SUV was allegedly involved in the shooting of an off-duty probationary officer minutes earlier at Elston Avenue and Addison Street, according to police.
The off-duty officer, 27, had been headed north on Elston Avenue when she was “involved in an incident” with another driver, according to Chicago police and COPA.
The other driver had allegedly stopped the black SUV abruptly in front of her at Addison Street, then pulled a firearm and began shooting, according to police.
She was struck in the face and taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center for injuries that were described as not life-threatening. Officers soon spotted the black
Officers later located the SUV near the 5000 block of West Lawrence Avenue. Video shows the two officers leaving their unmarked car and approaching the SUV from both sides.
The SUV lurches forward and the officer on the passenger side raises his gun and fires at the car. The SUV drives between the unmarked car and a marked squad car and flees.
The two officers jump back into their car and chase the SUV, but tell dispatchers minutes later that they lost it. The SUV was later found, unoccupied, in the 5800 block of North Drake Avenue. No arrests have been reported.
Days after the shooting, the wounded off-duty officer was fired from the department. The woman, “was a probationary police officer at the time and we do not disclose personnel matters,” spokesman Tom Ahern said at the time.
Law enforcement sources said she had failed a drug test on Sept. 17 and was stripped of her police powers that day.
