Chicago City Wire

Chicago police have taken a beating by the press following the March 21 shooting of 26-year-old Dexter Reed in Humboldt Park, with the latest being protest coverage from last week’s meeting of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA).

“Dexter Reed should be here today,” said Grace Patino, treasurer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression, who was quoted in the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of COPA’s monthly meeting held Thursday night.

“The officers involved in the execution of Dexter Reed must be immediately fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible of the law,” Patino added. “These death squads in Chicago, also known as ‘tact teams,’ need to be disbanded. We need an immediate end to pretextual traffic stops and Larry Snelling [Superintendent] should be fired."

Dexter Reed | American Greatness

Law enforcement experts not affiliated with Chicago Police Department have an entirely different take on the shooting.

“The shooting is completely within policy and completely justified,” Scott Ando, former head of the Independent Police Review Authority, COPA’s predecessor, recently told Crooked City author Martin Preib.

“As such, if COPA were to recommend discipline for these officers relative to the shooting, I would gladly testify on their behalf before the Police Board, an arbitrator, or the court,” Ando said.

News reports reacting to COPA’s April 9 release of police bodycam footage of the shooting also blasted police over the number of shots fired to subdue Reed— 96 in less than a minute.

"Literally, each bullet that was fired has to be justified," Sharon Fairley, a law professor at the University of Chicago and former head of COPA, was quoted by CBS News.

But Jason Johnson, President of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, told Chicago City Wire that the number of shots fired is immaterial to the incident.

“Police were fired upon. That’s evident from the video,” said Johnson, who has 20 years’ experience in law enforcement. “They had to do whatever they could in protecting themselves and the community by neutralizing the threat.”

Johnson noted that most of the rounds were fired into the car while Reed was shooting out. One officer kept firing when Reed stumbled from the car and collapsed in the street at the rear of it. The continued shooting was justified, Johnson said, because it was unclear from viewing the video if Reed was still armed.

Media reports also included comments from the current head of COPA, Andrea Kersten, questioning the reason officers gave for pulling Reed over; he was not wearing a seatbelt, they said. Kersten said that the tinted windows in Reed’s car would likely have prevented the officers from determining that.

Johnson said that the five plainclothes officers involved— comprising what Chicago police call a tactical unit— were part of anti-crime unit that has a constitutional right, particularly in a high crime area, to use a pretext like not wearing a seat belt to pull someone over.

“There is still a lot we don’t know about this entire incident,” Johnson said. “People say inappropriate tings when not in harm’s way, and usually say those things because they are starting with an anti-police bias.”

Humboldt Park on the West Side is one of Chicago’s higher crime areas.

Crime.Grade.org gives the neighborhood “F” grades for violent crime, property crime and other crimes. A crime occurs there every one hour and 57 minutes.