Chicago’s top cop said Wednesday that the department is looking at how to make police stations safer after officers shot and wounded a man who allegedly pointed a gun at them inside a West Side police station.
The shooting comes just over a week after a man was shot when he allegedly broke into another West Side Chicago police facility, grabbed unloaded guns from a table and aimed at officers.
“There’s some things we believe we can do to maybe strengthen some of our security measures,” Supt. David Brown told reporters hours after the latest shooting. “We’re in a process of looking [and] identifying things we can do in the near term and likely there might be some things we’ll do in the long term.”
The latest shooting occurred around 12:50 p.m. in the lobby of the Ogden District station at 3315 W. Ogden Ave., officials said.
The man was “mumbling and ranting” as he walked into the building’s lobby holding a gun wrapped in a plastic bag, Brown said.
“One of the officers immediately sees what appears to be a barrel of a gun protruding from the wrapped plastic bag that the offender is holding in his hand,” Brown told reporters at police headquarters, noting that officers told him to drop the weapon.
“The offender shouts and rants anti-police sentiment and then begins pointing the gun at the officers that are working the front desk,” Brown added.
Three officers opened fire, according to preliminary information provided by Brown. The man was struck at least once, “we believe in the shoulder,” Brown said.
The wound is not thought to be life-threatening. No officers were hurt, Brown said.
It’s unclear whether the gun was loaded and investigators haven’t yet identified the suspect, who Brown said hasn’t been “very cooperative.”
Brown said it didn’t appear the suspect was trying to turn the gun over to police.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates police shootings, responded to the scene Wednesday afternoon.
Donald Patrick, 47, was shot after he climbed a fire escape and entered an open door of the Homan Square compound at 3340 W. Fillmore St. on Sept. 26. He grabbed guns he found on a table and was wounded when he aimed them at police, officials said.
He was charged with felony counts of burglary and aggravated battery of a peace officer. During a court hearing, prosecutors said Patrick sought to recover property, though he had never been arrested in Chicago and there was nothing at the station belonging to him.
Patrick’s attorney suggested he may have been suffering “a mental health episode” when he scaled an exterior staircase and interrupted a SWAT training session. He was ordered held without bail.
Brown said there are heightened concerns “about access to our police facilities,” given the shooting at Homan Square, as well as the officers targeted by gunfire and the “anti-police sentiment expressed by this particular offender.”
“We have to balance that with being obviously open to the community to come in, make reports and to come in and engage with our officers,” Brown said. “So it’s a balance we have to strike, but there’s some things we believe we can do to maybe strengthen some of our security measures.”
“There’s several things we can look at doing,” he said, noting that other police facilities across the country have glass barriers and elevated desks. “The Homan Square incident happened days ago. This just happened.”
