The top prosecutor in Cook County, Illinois, admits to a “breakdown of communication” in how her office presented information related to the fatal shooting of a 13-year-old boy by Chicago police, according to the findings of an internal review released Wednesday.
State’s Attorney Kim Foxx apologized for the office’s handling of the shooting death of Adam Toledo, who died in the early morning of March 29. A police officer responding to a call of shots fired chased Toledo down an alley and shot him after ordering him to stop and to “drop it” — an incident caught on body camera and surveillance videos.
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Foxx’s office also confirmed that she told staff on Wednesday morning that First Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Coleman resigned, but declined to comment further because it is a personnel matter. Coleman, a veteran prosecutor, was promoted to her role in December, and was Foxx’s top adviser on day-to-day legal operations.
“The tragedy of the death of 13-year old boy [sic] has been clouded by the confusion and frustration my office has caused and for this I apologize,” Foxx said in a statement. “It’s not lost on me that our community is grieving and I want to assure Adam’s family and the public that my office is working diligently to investigate his death.”
The State’s Attorney’s Office was criticized when it was revealed that prosecutors initially gave a description of events implying that Toledo was holding a gun when he was shot by police. During an April 10 bond hearing for Ruben Roman, 21, who was with Toledo when he was shot, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy appeared to suggest to the court that Toledo was armed when he was shot.
“The officer tells (Adam) to drop it as (Adam) turns towards the officer. (Adam) has a gun in his right hand,” Murphy said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “The officer fires one shot at (Adam), striking him in the chest. The gun that (Adam) was holding landed against the fence a few feet away.”
The Toledo family insists the boy did not have a gun at the moment the officer fired the fatal shot.
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“Adam, during his last second of life, did not have a gun in his hand. The officer screamed at him, ‘Show me your hands.’ Adam complied, turned around, his hands were empty when he was shot in the chest at the hands of the officer. He did not have a gun in his hand,” Adeena Weiss Ortiz, and attorney for the Toledo family, said in April after police videos of the shooting were released.
Roman was arrested at the scene on misdemeanor charges of resisting or obstructing a peace officer, and was later charged with child endangerment, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm. He remains free on bond, reported NBC Chicago.
Based on the video from the shooting officer, identified by Chicago police as Eric Stillman, it was not clear if Toledo was holding a gun when he was being chased down the alley. An attorney for Stillman said in a statement that the officer had no choice but to shoot because he “had no place to take cover … the gun was being orientate[d] in his direction and he was left with no other option.” Stillman has been placed on administrative leave.
On April 15, Foxx’s office said publicly that Murphy had “failed to fully inform himself before speaking in court.” That same day, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, a police oversight board, released raw body camera videos from the shooting after weeks of public outcry.
Also on the same day, Chicago police released their own edited timeline video that showed a firearm lying on the ground at the scene of the shooting and also featured freeze frames from Stillman’s bodycam video that police said was of Toledo holding a gun milliseconds before he was shot.
Video released by COPA from a nearby surveillance camera that captured the shooting shows Toledo pausing by a gap in a wooden fence before facing the approaching officer, who quickly fired his weapon. The police timeline video shows a gun on the ground near that gap in the fence.
Community groups expressed outrage over the shooting, and said it was apparent that Toledo was complying with the officer’s orders and disputed the police narrative that there was an “armed confrontation.”
Murphy was placed on leave during the internal investigation but has since returned, Foxx said. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her office’s probe “revealed a breakdown of communication in how information was shared, which ultimately did not get elevated to State’s Attorney Foxx before, nor in a timely manner following, the bond court hearing” and the attorney “did not intend to give the impression that Adam Toledo was holding a gun when shot.”
“The language the attorney used in court was inartful,” the review added.
As a result of the investigation, the office said attorneys will undergo training on how to present facts in court and there will be additional office policies and procedures to ensure “checks and balances” operate as intended.
Foxx told the Sun-Times last month that her office’s failures had affected morale among employees.
“This is about the expectation of law enforcement to be forthright and transparent,” she said. “There is no sacrificial lamb here. This is about making sure that we get it right, and when we don’t get it right, owning it doing what we need to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
