Chicago Chief Defends Missing Video From Paul O’Neal Shooting
Chicago Chief discussed Paul ONeal shooting and protesters blocked him.
Chicago Chief Defends Missing Video From Paul O’Neal Shooting.
On Saturday, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson held a news conference to discuss the recent release of videos of the officer-involved shooting of Paul O’Neal after he tried to murder an officer.
Throughout the news conference, three protesters stood directly in front of Johnson in an attempt to block him from view as he was giving his statements. The anti-police media are spinning the shooting of Paul O’Neal as an innocent “unarmed black man” shooting. The released video actually justifies the officers’ actions because O’Neal’s attempt to murder an officer was captured on multiple police cameras.
Black Lives Matter groups are latching onto the fact that, despite a slew of video evidence which justifies the actions of the officers, the officer who fired the fatal shot did not have his body camera on at the time.
Police officers are expected to run into life and death situations, but still remember to manually activate their body cameras. It’s an expectation that requires a lot of practice to ingrain into officers, but Johnson advised that the officer who shot O’Neal only had his body camera for about a week.
“They had those cameras maybe about a week… There’s going to be a learning curve,” said Johnson.
This incident highlights one of the biggest problems with police body cameras. If an officer doesn’t manually activate their camera before a high-profile incident, the public will view it as de facto proof that the officer had nefarious intent.
The belief by those in the Black Lives Matter movement is that if an officer doesn’t activate their camera, it’s because they decided that they felt like shooting a black man for no reason other than the color of his skin. This belief doesn’t pass the basic smell test, because even if you believe that officers want to kill people without cause, the officers know that shooting somebody with their camera off is likely to result in the end of their career, and their family will face constant harassment from agitators.
While Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson may be defending the officer’s reasonable mistake to the media, he doesn’t appear to be doing the same within his department. All three officers who shot at Paul O’Neal have been suspended and stripped of their police powers, despite the shooting being legally justified.
