Chicago police offered scarce details other than telling the media they arrived at the building and “were confronted by a combative individual, resulting in an officer firing shots, fatally wounding two individuals.”
But dispatchers clearly told officers the situation involved a 19-year-old male with a bat, not a middle-aged woman who apparently was only trying to let them inside the building.
The woman’s name was Bettie Jones, a mother of five, who was either 55 or 57. She lived in the downstairs flat of the two-story building owned by the teen’s father, who lived in the upstairs flat with his wife and son.
Her daughter, Latesha Jones said police shot her from outside the door while her mother remained inside the door.
The teen’s father had told her to be on the lookout for police and to stay away from his son, who was having a mental episode.
There’s a growing trend that law enforcement is not to be trusted to perform their duties in a lawful and prudent manner. The growing number of citizens, especially in Chicago, who are killed under suspicious circumstances makes us who are law-abiding citizens wary and distrustful that cops can be counted to do their job without acting like thugs.
Who wants to open their door and be shot by a cop?
How can one anticipate that a call for help is going to end with a family member shot and killed?
Can we count on the legal system to mete out justice?
