CNN Law Enforcement Analyst on Adam Toledo Killing: ‘Tragic As It Was, The Shooting Was Reasonable’
Charles Ramsey, the former Washington, D.C. Chief of Police and Philadelphia Police Commissioner who serves as CNN’s law enforcement analyst, offered a somber assessment of the shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by Chicago police, saying that as “tragic as it was, the shooting was reasonable.”
Ramsey made the comments in a Thursday night appearance on AC360 with Anderson Cooper.
“The video is just horrific,” said Cooper, asking Ramsey what stood out to him when he watched the videos of the officer chasing and then shooting Toledo.
“Well, first of all, let me start by saying that it is a tragedy anytime someone loses their life, particularly a young person,” replied Ramsey. “It is a tragedy. But I too saw that video. In addition, I saw some other videos. I went to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability website that investigates these things for Chicago PD. They have several videos there.”
“In my opinion, tragic as it was, the shooting was reasonable,” said Ramsey.
He explained that this was a situation with “a 13-year-old on the street with a 21-year-old at 2:40 in the morning” and there was a “succession of shots, probably seven or eight shots” as someone fired a gun as a car went by. The sound of the gunfire triggered the “shotspotter” technology that the city of Chicago uses to alert law enforcement. Ramsey said he was “very familiar” with this technology, as it had been used by police departments where he had worked, and called it “very effective.”
Ramsey discussed some of the multiple video angles that showed the incident, including area security footage and the officers’ body cams:
They get to the end of the alleyway and he’s, again, telling the young man to stop, you know, to turn around. And you can see there’s a still shot with the young man who has has what looked like a gun in his right hand. He suddenly spun around and that’s when the officer fired a single shot. Immediately after, the officer went there and began applying first aid, and CPR to the young man.
There is a gun on the other side of the fence. There’s an opening there, and the gun is on the other side, maybe about five feet. But when he spins around like that, if he had the gun in his right hand, that could have flown right out of his hand, either as he was shot or he was trying to get rid of it as he was shot.
But it was literally less than a second from the time the officer saw the gun and the time he fired that shot. I believe that’s reasonable.
I know right now everybody’s, you know, blood in the water, about policing. And I have not hesitated to speak up whenever officers inappropriately use force of any kind. This ain’t one of those cases. I don’t know how many people have ever chased an armed person down an alley at night. I have and I know what it’s like, believe me.
Watch the video above, via CNN.
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