By Alex Kotlowitz, The New Yorker, April 24, 2021
Eddie Bocanegra and I met by Farragut high school in Chicago’s Little Village, a predominantly Latino neighborhood on the city’s West Side. This was, as Bocanegra said, his “old stomping ground.” He pointed out a crack along a wall and laughed. “It’s like archeology,” he told me, as he peeled back a sliver of paint to reveal layers upon layers of coats underneath, each one covering up graffiti, some of which Bocanegra contributed as a kid. We came here to talk about a recent incident. On March 29th, in an alley a couple hundred feet from the school, a police officer shot and killed Adam Toledo, who was just thirteen years old. The city released body-cam footage of the incident last week, which has led to large protests. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has called for a reconsideration of the Chicago Police Department’s policy on foot pursuits. An alderman declared that Toledo had been “executed.”
Bocanegra, who runs one of the most innovative violence-prevention programs in the country, felt compelled to watch the video of Toledo’s death. At two-thirty in the morning, the police responded to eight gunshots, which were captured on a new electronic surveillance system that detects gunfire in certain parts of the city. When the police got to the corner, they confronted Toledo, who allegedly was handed a handgun by a twenty-one-year-old man who had just fired it. Toledo ran down an alley, and an officer eventually caught up with him, by a damaged wood fence. The officer yelled, “Show me your hands!” On the video, Toledo, with his back to the officer, appears to toss the gun to the ground and quickly turn around, his hands in the air. He is wearing a white baseball cap and a Nike sweatshirt that reads “just do it.” The officer fired once and hit Toledo in the chest. He died at the scene. Bocanegra’s wife, Kathryn, an assistant professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work, urged Bocanegra not to watch it, but he did—not once but twice. He told me that he needed to, to make up his own mind about what had happened. For three nights, he couldn’t sleep. It brought back memories of friends he’d seen shot in that same neighborhood. “It never goes away,” he said.
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