Chicago police release fragmented video of the death of unarmed teen Paul O'Neal

Demonstrators protest the fatal police shooting of Paul O&#039;Neal on August 5, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois

(Image credit: Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

published 6 August 2016

On Friday, the Chicago Police Department released footage of the killing of Paul O'Neal, an unarmed African-American teenager who was fatally shot by police during and after an attempted escape with a stolen vehicle.

The video has immediately raised controversy as it does not include the exact moment of the 18-year-old's death on July 28. Police insist the footage gap occurred because an officer's body camera was not recording — having possibly sustained damage when O'Neal crashed the Jaguar he was driving into a police car — but critics suspicious of what they believe to be a convenient error have called for a special prosecutor to investigate the case.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the film "raised a lot of questions about whether departmental policies were followed," adding that officers will be held accountable for their actions "should wrongdoing be discovered." Chicago cops are prohibited from firing at a moving vehicle if the car "is the only force used against the [police] or another person," which was the case for O'Neal.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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