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Mom Pleads With City To Release Video Of Son's Fatal Shooting By Police

By Joe Ward | April 27, 2016 7:26am
 Michael Westley was fatally shot by police on June 16, 2013. His mother is working with activists to get video footage of the shooting released.
Michael Westley was fatally shot by police on June 16, 2013. His mother is working with activists to get video footage of the shooting released.
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CHICAGO — Michael Westley was with a group of friends in Englewood in June 2013 when officers thought the group might have been involved in an earlier shooting and began following them.

Police at the time said Michael then led officers on a chase through an alley in the 6600 block of South Sangamon Street before pointing a gun at officers, who then fired at the 15-year-old, killing him.

Michael's was shot near the intersection of 66th and Sangamon streets, under the watch of a Chicago Police Department camera perched on top of a nearby pole, said the boy's mother, Chantell Brooks.

Nearly three years later, Brooks and a group of activists are working to uncover the footage taken by the overhead police camera, known as a "police observation device" camera.

The group hopes the footage will confirm what witnesses and family members told Brooks, that Michael was in the process of surrendering to police when he was shot.

"My son ... I still haven't received any answers," Brooks said. "I really haven't heard from police, period. If this is the way I have to go about it, then I will."

Friends and family gathered in the 6700 block of South Sangamon Street Monday to mourn Michael Westley, 15, in June 2013. [DNAinfo/Erica Demarest]

To help bring the camera footage to light, Brooks has enlisted the help of activist William Calloway, who was instrumental in uncovering the Laquan McDonald footage and more recently video of police being rough with Tiffani Jacobs, who already had been shot.

Brooks told Calloway of the possibility of the camera having caught the shooting because she noticed it when she arrived at the shooting scene.

"It sits right there on the corner," Brooks said.

Brooks found that the Independent Police Review Authority's review of her son's shooting confirmed the existence of a camera in the vicinity of the shooting, though the report doesn't say if it had captured any relevant footage.

Calloway said he requested from the department any footage that might shed light on the shooting, including from the overhead camera. After a while, police released some information on the case, including dash-cam footage that shows the scene as it unfolded 20 seconds after the shooting, he said.

The dash-cam shows Michael laying on the ground with a gun nearby, Calloway said. It then shows police documenting the scene before an ambulance whisks Michael away, Brooks said. (Some of the footage can be seen in this FOX 32 story.)

But police never handed over the overhead camera footage, something that made him suspicious, Calloway said.

Another part of the Independent Police Review Authority's report on Michael's shooting caused Calloway concern: The report says that Michael was shot once, and that the bullet entered Michael through his "left axilla" before tearing through his lungs and chest.

Axilla is the medical term for armpit. Calloway said the fact that Michael was shot in his armpit could give some credibility to those who say the teen had given himself up, and possibly had his hands raised in the air, before he was shot.

The only way to know definitively, Calloway said, was to see the camera footage.

"I believe in my heart of hearts that it does capture the shooting," he said. "This is my gut feeling, but I believe the tape will show police killing a kid who was running" away.

Brooks said she appealed directly to new police Supt. Eddie Johnson to get the footage released. She said Johnson referred her to the department's legal staff.

A spokesman for the Police Department did not immediately return calls for comment.

Now Brooks said she is turning to the public in an effort to pressure the department into releasing the footage. Calloway, Brooks and others revisited the site of the shooting Monday and began a campaign to petition the department for the video.

Though she said she does not believe that a gun was found in Michael's waistband after he was shot, as police have said, Brooks said she wants to know what really happened even if it means she has to accept uncomfortable truths.

"Everybody loved him," Brooks said of Michael. "He was a very quiet kid, never went to jail. We just still can't believe this."

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