A Chicago police officer was shot and killed in the southwest part of the city on Wednesday, police officials confirmed.
The male police officer was shot at around 4.45 pm. in Gage Park in the 5200 block of South Spaulding Avenue, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told reporters at a news conference.
Two police cruisers responded to a domestic-related report of a woman being chased down the street by a man with a gun, Brown said.
One car knocked on the door of the residence involved while the second car engaged with the gunman, who ran away from officers.
The officers chased after the man, who at one point turned and fired multiple shots at them “point-blank,” hitting one of the officers, Brown said.
Police returned fire and the gunman was shot in the head, he said.
The shot officer was rushed to Sinai Hospital in critical condition, where he later died of his injuries.
He was a five-year veteran of the force, Brown said.
The gunman, an 18-year-old, was also hospitalized and was listed in critical condition.
No charges were filed. Brown said the deceased officer comes from “a family of civil servants” who “are taking this tragedy very seriously.” He said police were contacting family members around the world, including in Colombia, to try to get them to Chicago.
“Every officer in this police department and in this country is in mourning today,” Brown said. “The police are a big family of people who know that at some point they may be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice.”
“There are some broken hearts that will take a long time to cry, to accept this.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot joined Brown at the press conference.
“I want to remind people that every day, every shift, officers are in danger to our safety,” she said. “This is a terrible tragedy for our city and we mourn together with the officers’ family”
The shooting came hours after Brown handed in his resignation papers after the Democratic mayor lost his re-election bid in the Windy City on Tuesday.
Brown served as Chicago’s top police officer for two years, a tenure marked by a rise in violent crime and stalled progress on police reforms, the same issues that led to Lightfoot becoming the city’s first sitting mayor not to be re-elected in four decades. Lightfoot lost Tuesday’s election by a landslide as support for his progressive policies dwindled as the city battles an ongoing crime epidemic.
Lightfoot, 60, received just 16.4% of the total vote, behind former Chicago public schools head Paul Vallas [35%] and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson [20.2%]. The mayor blamed his crushing defeat on racism and his gender.
With no candidate with more than 50 percent of the vote, Vallas and Johnson will face off in a runoff on April 4, when Chicagoans will be forced to make a critical decision about how the city will fight rising crime in the future. Vallas, who finished first on the ballot and was the only white candidate in the race, is considered the toughest candidate on crime and won the endorsement of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police.
He had called for Brown’s firing and for the city to fill more than 1,600 existing police department vacancies. If elected, he promised to hire more police officers to patrol the city’s trains and buses, replacing the privately hired security guards.
“Public safety is the basic right of all Americans,” Vallas told supporters after the polls closed Tuesday night. “It is a civil right, and it is the main responsibility of the government. We will have a safe Chicago and we will make Chicago the safest city in America.”
Johnson, meanwhile, opened up to criticism after he called on the city to “defund the police” during a 2020 radio interview, which he called “a real political goal.”
As Cook County Commissioner, he supported a non-binding resolution to redirect money from police and prisons to social services. Johnson’s plan to fight crime requires implementation of the federal consent decree overseen by the Chicago Police Department, which was signed into law in 2019 following the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald and calls for reformed training, policies, and practices in several areas, including the use of force.
Under Lightfoot, Chicago has seen 695 homicides at the end of 2022, an increase from 804 in 2021, a level of violence the Windy City hasn’t seen in 25 years. There were also more than 20,000 robbery cases last year, nearly double the number of incidents in 2021, according to the Chicago Police Department’s year-end report.
And the rise in crime doesn’t appear to be slowing: In the first three weeks of 2023, crime rates in Chicago were up 61 percent from last year, according to CPD.
