Chicago police disciplinary investigators have ruled an officer was justified in fatally shooting 19-year-old Roshad McIntosh in 2014 on the West Side but continue to investigate another officer who gave an account of the shooting that clashed with surveillance video.
In a ruling released Tuesday afternoon, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability found that Officer Robert Slechter was justified in shooting McIntosh, who the officer said pointed a gun at him after a brief chase onto the back porch of a home in the Lawndale neighborhood. COPA’s report noted that officers found a loaded 9 mm pistol on the porch after the shooting.
The ruling marks the second time the shooting was found justified. The Independent Police Review Authority, the city’s former disciplinary agency that was shut down in 2017 after years of ineffectiveness, had found the shooting fell within departmental policy in 2015. Disciplinary officials reopened the case in 2017 at the family’s request after reviewing the investigation and finding what a spokeswoman described then as “insuffiencies.”
Lawyers for McIntosh’s family, who have a pending federal lawsuit, have pointed to witnesses who said the teen put his hands up before he was shot. But COPA noted that another officer had corroborated Slechter’s account of McIntosh pointing the gun.
In a telephone interview Tuesday, McIntosh’s mother, Cynthia Lane, said the discrepancies between officers’ accounts and the video footage taint the credibility of the official version of events. She said the truth will come out through her federal lawsuit.
“I’m still fighting for justice, and I’m not gonna stop,” she said.
The COPA report disclosed that another officer at the scene, Officer Saharat Sampim, remains under investigation “due to the discrepancies” between his various statements and the video footage.
The Chicago Tribune reported in 2017 that Sampim told disciplinary investigators that he was standing in a vacant lot next to the house when the shots rang out. Watching from the side of the house, Sampim said, he was about 15 to 20 feet from McIntosh when he clearly saw the teen with his arm extended, holding a gun, before Slechter opened fire.
But a Police Department surveillance camera shows Sampim in a different position. In a January 2016 deposition, Sampim acknowledged that he was actually in front and to the side of the house, placing him farther from the back porch and at a different angle than he first said. Nonetheless, he said he still saw the events behind the house from his position near the sidewalk in front.
Lawyers for the McIntosh family have contended he could not have seen the shooting.
Sampim could not be reached Tuesday for comment.
Another officer, Sgt. Nicola Zodo, told detectives that night — and IPRA investigators later — that he was behind the house in an alley in his squad car when he heard shots and rushed on foot to the porch to order McIntosh to drop a gun and handcuff him, records show. But Zodo later said under oath that the video indicated his squad car was in front of the house when the shots were fired, suggesting he would have taken longer to reach the porch than he’d said earlier.
While COPA’s ruling said Sampim remains under investigation, the agency noted the discrepancies between Zodo’s account and the video but said his statement was “otherwise generally consistent with the available evidence.”
dhinkel@chicagotribune.com
