Latino leaders call for halt on police foot pursuits unless serious threat is present
In the wake of two recent fatal shootings by Chicago police during foot chases, leaders in the city’s Latino community are calling for a halt to such pursuits when no immediate, serious threat is present and until a new policy on them is in place.
The call from the Pilsen Law Center and the Illinois Latino Agenda comes after the shootings in late March of Adam Toledo, 13, and Anthony Alvarez, 22, by Chicago police officers.
“This is not an acceptable way for foot pursuits to end,” a statement released by the groups Tuesday reads. “The Pilsen Law Center and the Illinois Latino Agenda call upon Mayor Lori Lightfoot to instruct Chicago police Superintendent Brown to immediately issue a moratorium suspending all foot pursuits where there is no imminent serious threat of harm to the officer or other persons.”
In a telephone interview, the founder of the Pilsen Law Center, Arturo Jáuregui, made clear the organizations would still expect officers to engage in a chase if they see serious threat to the public. The groups are also asking that the moratorium be in effect until all officers have been trained on the new policies as well.
Toledo and Alvarez were shot two days apart, but Toledo’s unusually young age touched off immediate protests and led Lightfoot to pledge that a foot-chase policy would be immediately drafted. Calls for the policy have continued over the past month, as the city witnessed the release of footage of both shootings, which were captured on department body-worn cameras.
The department, however, has been on notice for several years about the need to help officers balance the extreme risk of the chases with the need to respond quickly to violence, including shootings.
A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2016 found that foot chases played a role in more than a third of the 235 shootings by Chicago police officers from 2010 through 2015 that ended with someone wounded or killed. In 2017 a sweeping investigation into the Chicago Police Department by the Department of Justice concluded that officers were engaging in tactically unsound foot chases that “too often” ended with officers shooting someone for unreasonable reasons, according to the report.
A 2019 federal consent decree that followed that report calls for sweeping department reforms. On March 5, the independent monitor overseeing that work recommended that a foot-pursuit policy be established.
On Tuesday, the department said in a statement that the new foot-pursuit policy, which is based on “best practices” from other cities, will be in place by summer, after the public has a chance to comment on it.
“The Chicago Police Department has made reform a top priority within the organization and is dedicated to fulfilling all of the consent decree requirements, as well as truly changing the culture of the institution,” the police statement read. “The department is working through the process of arranging the necessary community engagement, internal focus groups, as well as setting up a period for public comment.”
Why the city failed to act until now has been subject of much debate and criticism, including in the latest statement by the Latino groups.
Jáuregui, a private lawyer who is also the managing partner of the Pilsen Law Center, said in an interview that for now the risk of harm to officers and the public, absent a good policy and training, is too high.
“We lost, in a span of two days, two Latino residents,” Jáuregui said. “And in our view we believe if there had been some clear policies and procedures in place governing the foot chases, this tragedy could have been avoided.”
Meanwhile, an autopsy report released on Tuesday from the Cook County medical examiner’s office showed that Toledo was shot once in the left side of the chest.
The exit wound for the bullet was shown to be on the right side of Toledo’s back, according to the report. Video of his shooting appeared to show him carrying a gun as he was chased, and tossing it behind a fence before turning toward the officer and raising his hands.
At the time of his death, Chicago police contacted the medical examiner’s office and estimated that Toledo, who was unidentified at the time, was first thought to be in his 20s.
Chicago Tribune’s Laura Rodríguez Presa contributed.
