COPA releases harrowing video of fatal police shooting of Dexter Reed on West Side, which mayor calls ‘deeply disturbing’

A West Side traffic stop ended last month with a group of Chicago police officers firing nearly 100 bullets, body-camera footage released to the public Tuesday showed, a barrage that killed a man who apparently first shot an officer in the wrist after he was pulled over for not wearing his seat belt.

At least three of the rounds were fired by police after the man, 26-year-old Dexter Reed, was lying unresponsive on a Humboldt Park street, the footage released by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability showed. The video’s release prompted immediate responses from city leaders including Mayor Brandon Johnson, who called the scenes “deeply disturbing,” and “extremely painful and traumatic for many of our city’s residents.”

Attorneys for Reed’s family called for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to file criminal charges against officers involved in the shooting — a possibility that Foxx acknowledged during a news conference.

The video was perhaps the most troubling police footage released during the first year of the Johnson administration, coming at a time when the city in many ways is still managing reform in the wake of the videotaped police killings of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and 13-year-old Adam Toledo in separate shootings. An officer was criminally convicted for shooting McDonald 16 times as he walked on a street in 2014, a killing that led to a federal consent decree, and a civil suit and associated police board case in Toledo’s 2021 death in a Little Village alley still are pending.

COPA has recommended four officers involved in the shooting be stripped of their police powers as the investigation continues, officials said.

Records obtained by the Tribune show that COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten wrote police Superintendent Larry Snelling on April 1 to raise concerns about the reason for the stop. She also said that the four officers who shot at Reed continued doing so after he exited the SUV and was unarmed, and three of the officers reloaded their weapons during the 41 seconds of gunfire.

“Based on the totality of the available evidence, COPA has grave concerns about the officers’ ability to assess what is a necessary, reasonable, and proportional use of deadly force,” Kersten wrote. The letter questioned whether the officers could reasonably view whether Reed was wearing a seat belt since the windows of his vehicle were tinted.

The video made public Tuesday showed the traffic stop in the 3800 block of West Ferdinand Street the evening of March 21, when a team of five tactical officers assigned to the Police Department’s Harrison District (11th) pulled over a white SUV driven by Reed. The officers, with weapons drawn, repeatedly ordered him to roll down the vehicle’s tinted windows.

Reed initially complied, the video showed, but he disregarded orders to roll down the window on the passenger side, and after a few seconds of officers shouting, gunfire erupted. A Chicago Police Department officer standing on the SUV’s passenger side was shot in the wrist. COPA said it was Reed who fired first.

Dozens more rounds were fired by the officers in the next 30 seconds. After he was shot, Reed can be seen falling out of the vehicle with officers continuing to shoot him as he lay motionless in the street. All told, four CPD officers fired 96 rounds during the exchange, COPA officials said.

A gun was recovered in the SUV’s front passenger seat, authorities said.

Johnson, a progressive whose mayoral campaign heavily touched on fighting police brutality, was flanked by representatives of COPA and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office as he spoke.

“As mayor and as a father raising a family, including two Black boys on the West Side of Chicago, I’m personally devastated to see yet another young Black man lose his life during an interaction with the police.”

Johnson said he called Reed’s family this weekend and also visited the officer wounded in the shootout and said “both Dexter Reed and this officer could have been my students.” Johnson once taught at Westinghouse College Prep, where Reed went to high school.

“If that bullet had hit him a few inches in a different direction, I would be here today talking about the loss of another Black man,” Johnson said about the CPD officer who was wounded.

Warning: Graphic content. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability released video footage Tuesday that shows a group of Chicago police officers firing dozens of bullets at Dexter Reed, 26, during a traffic stop in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on March 21, 2024. (Chicago Police Department)

Chicago police issued a statement earlier Tuesday.

“This shooting remains under investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) with the full cooperation of the Chicago Police Department,” the statement read. “We cannot make a determination on this shooting until all the facts are known and this investigation has concluded.”

It was not known how many times Reed was shot. A representative for the Cook County medical examiner’s officer told the Tribune on Monday — 18 days after his death — that Reed’s autopsy was not yet finalized.

COPA boss Kersten appeared at the news conference, noting Reed appeared to fire his gun first, wounding one of the officers, before four cops shot back.

“These are incredibly painful and complex incidents that often garner considerable public attention, but at their core they most impact the lives of those directly involved and their loved ones,” Kersten said. “My hope today is that we can provide facts about the processes.”

Reed’s family viewed the footage Monday with representatives from COPA, according to attorney Andrew Stroth.

Hours after the videos were released, more than a dozen members of Reed’s family and their attorneys gathered for a news conference outside COPA’s office in West Town.

After Reed’s sister and father somberly called for justice and accountability, his mother, Nicole Banks, stepped to the microphones.

“I just miss my son,” she said through tears. “I’m hurt, I’m sick, I feel like I’ve been shot. My insides are burning up.”

Steven Hart, one of the family’s attorneys, questioned what prompted the tactical officers to even initiate the stop.

“Why were tactical officers jumping out of an unmarked police car with their guns drawn for a simple traffic violation of not wearing a seat belt?” Hart said. “To us, to the family, that sounds disproportionate. It sounds pretextual. There is a problem with policing in this city when five tactical officers jump out of an unmarked police car, brandishing their weapons, for a young man that wasn’t wearing his seat belt.”

Hart’s co-counsel, Stroth, called for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to bring charges in “a criminal indictment against some of these officers.”

Foxx at the news conference did not indicate whether criminal charges seemed likely, but spoke broadly about her “unwavering” commitment to finding justice for all parties.

“We are aware of the community’s need for answers and the desire for swiftness,” Foxx, who chose not to seek a third term this year, said. “Let me assure you that our pursuit of justice will be relentless, guided by the facts, grounded in evidence and the law. However, and I must stress, it is equally important that we allow the investigative process the time it needs to ensure that its findings are beyond reproach.”

Superintendent Snelling was not present at the media briefing, but took part in a question session with members of the public at police headquarters Monday evening. After the shooting, Snelling said, he immediately ordered CPD’s Incident Response Team to collect all video footage of the shooting so that the entire sequence can be seen in context.

“What you’re getting right now is people posting things in social media without all the facts,” Snelling said.

After Reed’s death, his family had written a letter to Johnson and Snelling detailing Reed’s personal life.

“Dexter was the second oldest of three children,” his family wrote. “He has an older sister Porscha and younger brother Julius. Dexter played basketball at Westinghouse College Prep High School and led the team to a regional championship in 2016. After high school, Dexter went to school and played basketball at Morton College. While Dexter enjoyed basketball, he aspired to one day become a sports broadcaster. Dexter’s favorite artist was Jay-Z. Dexter also liked to eat vegetables and cooking baked beans. He was affectionately known to our family, friends and coaches as ‘Dex.’”

Later Tuesday at an activist-led news conference outside the Harrison District police headquarters, a woman who identified herself as Reed’s sister said Reed “did not get out of the car to have a shootout with the Chicago Police Department.”

After about an hour of speeches from organizers and two of Reed’s relatives, protestors blocked the intersection of South Kedzie Avenue and West Harrison Street for about 40 minutes. Aside from a brief scuffle where protestors chased a heckler, the protest was peaceful. Throughout the protest, the crowd chanted “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?” at a throng of officers who looked on.

Without casting blame on either Reed or responding officers, Johnson at his news conference stressed the importance of “building trust” between communities and the police.

“It will not be easy. But we will not rest,” Johnson said. “And the only way we can build trust is through accountability. We will not rest until that accountability has been met.”

As his remarks ended, Johnson commented on the balance city leaders must seek in such instances.

“Shooting a police officer can never be condoned. … I will never stand for that, and neither will the city of Chicago,” Johnson said. “We also have to be very clear that we hold our police to the highest of standards. As agents of the law, they have the highest responsibility to the communities in which they serve. As a government, as representatives of the people, we have an obligation to abide by the rule of the law and to follow procedures, and that is what we are ultimately doing here.”

Chicago Tribune’s Caroline Kubzansky contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misidentified the neighborhood where the shooting took place. The story has been updated to note the neighborhood was Humboldt Park.