A Chicago police officer was shot and seriously injured Sunday afternoon during a brief shootout in the southern Englewood neighborhood.
An unidentified police officer and the male offender were injured in the area of 69th and Sangamon streets, authorities said.
The officer was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in serious but stable condition, according to Police Chief David Brown.
At an afternoon press conference in front of Hyde Park Medical Center, Brown said he had spoken to the wounded officer and his team. He described them as “shaken” after the second shooting in less than a week in the area.
A female police officer was injured during a traffic stop Wednesday in Englewood. The next day, a CPD officer and a U.S. deputy marshal were injured in a shootout in the Northwest.
On Sunday, Brown told reporters that three uniformed police officers in Chicago were driving in an unmarked car in block 6900 on South Sangamon Street around 2 pm when they stopped traffic. The car they stopped pulled into a dead-end street, he said.
“The offender got out of the car and started firing at the police and there was an exchange of gunfire,” Brown said. “The officer was hit twice, once in the arm, once in the torso. The offender was also hit. The offender is in critical condition and the police officer is in serious but stable condition.
UNDERSTANDING: Chicago District 7th Officer. @ ChicagoCAPS07 was shot. The officer was transported to the University of Chicago Hospital. Unknown condition. PIO on the way to the hospital. More details follow. # ChicagoPolice
– Tom Ahern (@TomAhernCPD) June 5, 2022
Brown said he did not know how many times the offender had been shot and police would delay revealing details until a video of the incident was reviewed.
Brown blamed “insolence” for a 500 percent increase in attacks on police officers over the past two years. “Violators are brazen to hurt police officers,” Brown told reporters.
In a statement posted on Twitter on Sunday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot called on the US Senate to take action to end access to illegal weapons. “How many employees and residents must be victims of gun violence before we act?” Lightfoot said.
The second police shooting was bad news for some Englewood residents hoping to avoid the violence that comes this summer.
Asiaha Butler, co-founder and CEO of the Greater Englewood Resident Association, said Sunday’s shooting came during Wear Orange Weekend, a national campaign to end gun violence. “More than just events have to happen,” she said.
Butler said new efforts are forthcoming that will help bridge the gap between police and the community and raise visibility and awareness between bloc clubs and neighborhood associations such as RAGE. But she said it is difficult to reach people who commit this type of crime.
“I definitely think some bold strategies will have to be implemented,” Butler said. “I do not know what they are. But I think we’re going to have to stop doing what we usually do and start really thinking differently about how we deal with community violence. “
Daryl Smith is president of the Englewood Political Task Force, a group that mobilizes citizens for community action. “It is a sad situation when every police officer is shot. “You have good police and bad police,” he said.
Smith’s group is also working to bridge the gap between skeptical and cowardly residents and local police. A group of Smith and other neighborhood activists worked to ease tensions between police and residents in 2020 after the death of George Floyd and the police shooting of Latrell Allen, which caused a stir and involved a robbery in the center.
Shooting like Sunday, Smith said, makes it difficult for us to try to get the community involved with the police, because now many people are upset when a person is shot by the police … but we need to know all the details, the intricacies of all the circumstances. this case, “he said.
Smith, who was in the southern suburbs when he heard about the shooting, said he planned to return to Englewood to talk to residents. “I’m going back to the neighborhood to try to make sure there’s a little peace there, because the suspect was also shot,” he said. “We need to make sure there are no bad actions by the police and the public is in turmoil, so I need to go back and put my ears to the ground and see what happens.”
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