A Chicago police officer was expected to recover after he was shot and wounded in the face Sunday afternoon outside a police station in the city’s Gresham neighborhood, police said.
At an afternoon news conference outside of Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where the officer was taken, police Superintendent David Brown said the wounded officer, a police sergeant, suffered a superficial wound to the chin, but was expected to be released later in the day.
The sergeant had just left the Gresham police station at 7808 S. Halsted St. when he heard a gunshot and felt pain in his chin around 2:30 p.m., according to the city’s top cop.
Brown had few details but said investigators were going through city and private video for suspects. No arrests had been made.
After the shooting, an ambulance sat in the police parking lot while officers ran down the sidewalk.
A supervisor asked other officers to keep pedestrians away from the sidewalk and an empty lot across the street. “Look for casings!” an officer yelled.
Police vehicles escorted the ambulance as it pulled out of the parking lot onto South Halsted Street.
“A cop was shot,” an officer yelled while removing a Tribune journalist from an empty lot across the street.
A woman walked by another officer putting up crime scene tape along 78th Street. “You be careful out here,” she said.
“Thank you,” the officer replied.
Before ending the news conference, Brown warned that the department was on pace to exceed the 79 Chicago police officers who were fired upon in the line of duty last year. Thirteen officers have been fired upon this year; the sergeant is the first to be hit by a bullet.
“It just highlights the dangers of policing in the current environment we’re in,” Brown said. “And I just want to end with: God bless our men and women in blue at the Chicago Police Department.”
