The controversy surrounding the fatal shooting of Calvin Parks Monday by Chicago police illustrates the profound responsibility that police officers must exercise when using deadly force.
It is a responsibility that often must be carried out amid the confusion of a chase when very few facts are at hand and even less time is available for the facts to be considered.
It is a responsibility that requires a police officer, in a potentially life-threatening situation, not only to be brave, efficient and competent, but to recognize and evaluate in a matter of seconds the legal, and lethal, implications of his actions.
So far in 1986, Chicago police have fatally shot two people. Over the last five years, an average of 20 people have died each year at the hands of the Chicago police.
Sometimes, the question of whether to shoot or not to shoot is clear. Many times, however, it isn`t. It wasn`t on Monday night.
At about 8:15 p.m. Monday, Calvin Parks was shot once through the head by a police bullet and died.
His death came at the conclusion of a high-speed five-mile auto chase that began near the Cabrini-Green public housing project and ended along the Kennedy Expressway just north of Western Avenue.
He was unarmed.
”That was nothing but murder,” said Parks` sister, Renee, Thursday. ”I don`t care if he had a police record. That didn`t give them a reason to kill him.”
But, according to police sources, the officer who shot Parks thought Parks had a gun.
In fact, the officer, hearing a volley of warning shots by other police, thought Parks was firing at him. He acted in what he thought was self-defense, police sources said.
The Chicago police department`s long-standing policy on deadly force permits an officer to shoot to kill a suspect when the suspect threatens the officer`s life or the lives of anyone else.
A new stricter policy for Chicago police that the department is in the process of implementing will also permit the use of deadly force for self-defense. Even cities such as New York, with the strictest deadly force policies, permit an officer to shoot to kill to protect lives.
One major question the Chicago police department`s Office of Professional Standards must answer in its investigation of the shooting will be whether it was reasonable for the officer who shot Parks to think he was acting in self- defense.
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Another major question is whether the officers who fired warning shots acted correctly. The firing of warning shots is governed by the same policy that governs the use of deadly force.
Because of the internal investigation, details of the shooting have to be pieced together. What follows is what appears to be the most accurate chronology according to police sources:
On Monday night, Parks, a 24-year-old handyman who lived with his girlfriend in the 900 block of North Racine Avenue, was driving a 1985 Buick that had been reported stolen three days earlier from the Austin neighborhood on the West Side.
Inside the car was a 16-year-old girl who, when the chase was over, told police she had been abducted by Parks near Sedgwick and Blackhawk Streets.
Two tactical police from the East Chicago Avenue district saw Parks driving past their unmarked car and entered his license plate number into their mobile computer.
Almost immediately, they learned the car was stolen, so they made a U-turn to begin chasing him.
Parks, who had been placed on probation in 1980 for auto theft, got away at first, but was spotted about a minute later near Cabrini-Green.
After a chase through the streets of the project, Parks sped west on Division Street across Goose Island and onto the Kennedy Expressway with several marked and unmarked police cars in pursuit.
An East Chicago Avenue squad car, going 70 miles an hour, pulled alongside Parks` Buick, but Parks whipped his auto into the squad car, forcing it into a spin. Parks` car skidded off the highway just past Western Avenue.
Police grabbed Parks, but he broke away and ran into the darkness down a muddy embankment to a gully where a fence blocked entry to the Chicago & North Western Railroad tracks.
To get over the fence, Parks climbed a set of iron bars over the entrance to an old underpass. When one tactical officer tried to grab his leg, the suspect kicked him in the face and then jumped to the other side of the fence. Parks ran southeast along the tracks as one tactical officer climbed the fence after him.
At this point, a uniformed officer reportedly fired three warning shots in an attempt to get Parks to stop. The tactical officer who had jumped the fence also fired two or three warning shots.
A tactical officer, on the other side of the fence, heard the volley, saw Parks`s arm raised and thought Parks was firing a handgun at him, so he fired three shots at the suspect. One shot hit Parks in the head, killing him.
David Fogel, administrator of the Office of Professional Standards, said the three officers who have admitted firing their weapons are from the East Chicago Avenue district. The guns of all 14 will be examined, he said. In addition, at least four eyewitnesses ”and one ear-witness” will be questioned. The internal investigation will take four to six weeks, Fogel said.
Edwin Bishop, executive assistant to Police Supt. Fred Rice, said Thursday that, until recently, the police department has permitted the use of deadly force in three general instances: when the life of the police officer or other police or civilians is endangered by a suspect, when a suspect is using a firearm to escape, or when a felony suspect is attempting to escape. A felony suspect would be someone believed to have committed a major crime such as murder, rape, robbery or burglary.
A change in that policy, however, became necessary when the U.S. Supreme Court on March 20, 1985, acting in the case of a 15-year-old burglary suspect fatally shot by Memphis police, ruled that deadly force could not be used to prevent the escape of a ”non-dangerous” suspect.
Rank and file Chicago police were told of the decision, and, over the rest of the year, police administrators hammered out a new policy that prohibits the use of deadly force when the suspect is believed to have committed only a property crime, such as auto theft, burglary or arson.
The new policy is being implemented piecemeal through a 2 1/2-hour in-service training session that will be given to all 12,000 Chicago police this year. Those sessions began in April and will be concluded in August. Until that time, however, the new policy won`t be formally in force in Chicago, Bishop said.
New York has an even stricter deadly force policy although it is unwritten. Sgt. Peter Sweeney said, ”In our academy, we tell them not to fire at fleeing felons.”
However, according to one New York police official, the policy isn`t strictly enforced:
”You just saw him kill somebody–what are you supposed to do? If somebody put a knife in the mayor–left a knife in the mayor`s heart–and ran away and I`m running to get him, I`d better shoot him.”