HUMBOLDT PARK — In a letter to Chicago’s top cop, the city’s police watchdog agency questioned why officers conducted the traffic stop that led to them fatally shooting Dexter Reed last month — and noted they were already investigating the same officers for a similar stop.
In a letter to Supt. Larry Snelling, Andrea Kersten, Civilian Office of Police Accountability chief administrator, raised concerns over the reason officers gave for pulling over Reed last month. The stop, allegedly made for a seat belt violation, led to a shootout that left one officer wounded while others fired at Reed nearly 100 times, killing him.
Videos of the shooting were released Tuesday.
Kersten said the incident raised “serious questions about the proportionality of their [officers’] use of deadly force.”
In the letter, Kersten asked Snelling to strip four of five officers involved of their police powers while the accountability agency investigates.
Reed was pulled over by tactical officers March 21 in the 3800 block of West Ferdinand Street. Officials said the deadly encounter began because police stopped Reed for not wearing a seat belt.
Reed shot at officers first, hitting one in his forearm — then four officers shot about 96 times in 41 seconds, according to the oversight agency.
Evidence gathered by the oversight investigators calls into question the “veracity” of officers’ claims about the seat belt infraction, according to Kersten’s letter. Investigators are uncertain how officers would have seen Reed wasn’t wearing a seat belt given their positions and the fact Reed’s SUV had tinted windows, Kersten wrote.
“This evidence raises serious concerns about the validity of the traffic stop that led to the officers’ encounter with” Reed, according to the letter, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Videos of the shooting show plainclothes officers pulling over Reed. Several get out of a car and order Reed to roll down his windows. He rolls his tinted driver’s side window down.
“What are you doing?” one officer says.
“I’m not doing nothing,” he responds before partially rolling the window back up.
The officer orders Reed not to roll the window up and pulls on the driver’s door handle, which is locked.
“Do not roll the window up, unlock the doors now!” an officer orders. At least two officers take out guns and point them at Reed while giving him orders.
“Open the door now! Open the door now!” an officer orders Reed while the officers back away, their guns pointed at Reed.
A neighbor’s surveillance footage of the incident shows an officer walk up to the passenger side of the SUV and stand there for several moments before shots are heard and the officer turns back and runs away, taking cover. Smoke can be seen around the car, which moves forward. That officer later radioed in that he’d been shot, and his wound can be seen in several videos.
Numerous shots are then heard as officers fire and run around the car.
Reed drives the car forward several times, hitting another car. He gets out of the driver’s side of the car and goes to the back; he is shot and falls to the ground. At least one officer continues to shoot at him as he lies on the ground. They stop and Reed lies, unmoving and bleeding. Officers point their guns at him and order him not to move as he lies still. One officer says Reed is still breathing as officers look for a gun.
Officers put Reed’s hands behind his back and handcuff him. Blood is seen around him on the street. The officers later turn Reed over and perform chest compressions on him.
As Reed lay motionless on the ground, one officer shot him three more times, Kersten wrote.
The officer who shot Reed while he was on the ground fired at least 50 rounds, Kersten wrote. As the incident played out over 40 seconds, three of four officers reloaded their guns, according to the oversight agency.
“Additionally, COPA notes that [it] has an open investigation into another traffic stop involving the same five officers, which occurred less than a month prior to this incident and was purportedly also based on a seat belt violation,” Kersten wrote in the letter.
Kersten asked “at a minimum” the officer who shot Reed while he was down be stripped of police powers, “based on the safety risk posed by his conduct during the incident.”
“This provided the officers with ample opportunity to reassess the situation, but they continued to use deadly force,” Kersten wrote to police brass. “Based on the totality of the available evidence, COPA has grave concerns about the officers’ ability to assess what is a necessary, reasonable, and proportional use of deadly force.”
Block Club has not named the officers because they have not been charged with a crime. The fifth officer, who was wounded in the shooting, is not among those that police watchdogs are seeking to strip of police powers.
A Police Department spokesperson said the department is waiting for the conclusion of investigations into the shooting before it acts on the case. The officers who were involved in the shooting are on 30-day administrative leave, which is standard after use of force.
“This shooting remains under investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) with the full cooperation of the Chicago Police Department,” the spokesperson said. “We cannot make a determination on this shooting until all the facts are known and this investigation has concluded.”
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has 18 months to conclude its administrative investigation into the officers involved.
Reed’s family members and their attorneys said they want the officers involved fired and charged to the highest degree.
“We want answers,” Porscha Banks, Reed’s older sister, said at a news conference after the video was released. “They shot at him 96 times and reloaded. This has to stop. I can’t explain the pain me and my family are going through.”
Andrew Stroth, another attorney for the family, acknowledged Tuesday there was a gun found in Reed’s car, but he said video shows Reed got out of the vehicle unarmed — only to be shot by officers.
Stroth and the family said pulling over Reed for not wearing his seat belt was “completely unjustified.”
“We’re asking the Johnson administration to commit to the consent decree,” Stroth said of the federal mandate for change within the Police Department. “And there has been a total lack of compliance in the mayor and police [Supt.] Snelling to disband these tactical units that have been terrorizing communities on the West and South sides.”
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