A South Shore block struggles to understand last week's police shooting

In the garden behind the gracious home in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, birds chirp, a fountain gently bubbles and Smokey Robinson tunes fill the summer afternoon.
This, former Chicago Bears strong safety Charlie Brown says, is his sanctuary.
This is also across the street from where Chicago police last week chased and fatally shot an 18-year-old alleged car thief who wouldn't stop for officers.
The shooting of Paul O'Neal, an unarmed black teen, has touched off troubling, familiar concerns citywide about the treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement. Indeed, much of the nation is grappling with similar questions in the wake of other deaths at the hands of officers.
On Brown's manicured block, residents are struggling to understand the response by Chicago police officers, whose gunfire interrupted an otherwise quiet Thursday evening as residents relaxed with dinners on back decks and watched the Democratic National Convention or the Crosstown Classic showdown between the Cubs and White Sox.
In interviews this week, neighbors questioned the need to shoot an unarmed young man suspected of stealing a car and said the use of such firepower rattled them, leaving them to wonder who among them could have been caught in the crossfire. The little boy who rides his bike up and down each evening waiting for his dad to get home from work? The 3-year-old on her scooter? What about the dog-walkers?
"I think we were kind of treated like we aren't who we are. We are a peaceful neighborhood," said Brown, 73, sitting under the shade of a magnolia tree in his yard. "I don't envy the police. They don't have an easy job. But this was a car. Nobody had been killed yet. … Now we have a situation that is boiling over, and a sanctuary is shot to hell. Nobody wins. The police lose. The community loses. The parents have to bury a child."
Brown, who was not home at the time of the shooting but has since talked to his neighbors about what happened, paused before continuing.
"There is no other way to say it. I don't think this would have happened in Lincoln Park, at least I hope not. Not that I think Lincoln Park would deserve it. No neighborhood deserves it."
'Guns blazing? Really?'
Police said O'Neal was driving a stolen Jaguar convertible at 7:30 p.m. July 28 when officers tried to stop him as he drove north in the 7400 block of South Merrill Avenue. He struck a police SUV, leading two officers to open fire at the Jaguar, sources said.
O'Neal continued north into the 7300 block of Merrill, where he collided with a second police SUV, causing significant damage. He then bolted from the car and ran into a yard, where a third officer chasing him shot him. O'Neal died of a gunshot wound to the back, the Cook County medical examiner's office said.
Within 48 hours, after reviewing police body and dashboard camera videos, Superintendent Eddie Johnson relieved all three officers of their police powers, saying it appeared department policies had been violated.
When the shots rang out that night, Kate Miller and her partner were eating dinner on their back deck, the radio tuned to the political convention. The couple had moved onto the block seven years ago from the busier Hyde Park neighborhood in search of a quiet block, a yard to garden in and space for their two dogs. They had a daughter 31/2 years ago.
"I heard five or six gun shots," Miller said. "My partner was already up and moving and then she hit the deck."
Miller's panicked partner ran upstairs to their sleeping daughter and carried her into the hallway for protection. Curious about what was happening, Miller went onto her front steps. Like Brown, her neighbor, Miller has concerns about what had unfolded in a matter of minutes — several shots fired and then dozens of officers descending on her neighborhood.
"Guns blazing? Really?" said Miller, who declined to name her partner. "Was that necessary for the pursuit of a property crime? He was unarmed. He was fleeing. … Our daughter could have been out on her scooter."
The officers' decisions are under investigation by the Independent Police Review Authority, the agency that examines police shootings and other serious incidents. Among the critical questions for investigators to unravel, according to experts, will be why the officer who fatally shot O'Neal thought the young man had a gun.
Investigators will also likely focus on O'Neal's actions that night to evade police — and whether he came close to striking an officer with the Jaguar.
The difficult work police must do — sizing up these tense situations sometimes in seconds — is not lost on the residents. Police officers are their neighbors and friends, they said. A retired officer lives on the block where the shooting took place.
Still, some residents wonder whether the officers' responses were affected by the fact that they were in a predominantly African-American neighborhood and trying to apprehend a black teen.
"We know well what happens with racism," Miller said. " … People make assumptions based on age and skin color and gender."
Gail Mangrum, a retired Chicago police officer who lives nearby and is familiar with her neighbors' worries, said she thinks the officers' actions were a result of possibly poor decision-making moments after a jarring crash.
Leaning on one another
Neighbors on the block said their middle-class community was somehow getting cast as a gang or violence-plagued area. What happened last week clashed with the quiet, peaceful pace of life on a block where neighbors say they leave doors unlocked and spare one another trips to the store by sharing an onion or a cup of sugar.
It's not surprising then that in the week since the shooting, the residents have leaned on one another. They've met to talk about what happened. Called one another. More than one even wrote down what they were feeling and shared it on the block.
Jackie Hemphill, a 41-year resident, penned letters to both the Chicago police and her neighbors — including one to Miller's family after young people gathered on their front lawn for a mostly peaceful protest and vigil.
"We are watching out for you," Hemphill wrote to Miller. "Put my number in your phone and contact me if you need anything."
Hemphill also wrote to Superintendent Johnson to tell him that despite her concerns about what she thought was a "wild, wild West" response that night, the local district has helped keep things calm since then, including an officer who gave young people time and space to grieve at the vigil.
"What touched my heart was when the vigil was over, (he) sat in his car and he allowed the cousin, girlfriend and about six young people who were still present to quietly grieve," Hemphill wrote. "That was kindness. That was community policing. And that was an exceptional man who did that for those kids."
Hemphill was not alone in needing to process what happened. Kim Nevels, who lives a block down, also put her thoughts on paper and shared them with neighbors.
"We are a neighborhood, predominantly Black, but not all Black," she wrote. "We are professionals and retirees – police officers, teachers, psychologists and lawyers. We are homeowners. We are raising families. And because of this Thursday shooting, this neighborhood trauma, we have had to check in with each other to make sure everyone is doing okay in the aftermath. … We are not okay."
High marks for Johnson
The expected release Friday of the videos just eight days after the shooting marks a notable moment for Chicago policing. Historically, video recordings capturing controversial police interactions were never released or trickled out years later, after a trial.
But last fall's release of troubling video showing a white officer shoot a black teen 16 times seemingly changed everything. Weeks of protests followed the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, then-police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was fired, and the U.S. Department of Justice launched an exhaustive investigation of police practices.
A city policing task force, formed amid the crisis, led to some change, including a directive that video evidence of a police shooting be released within 60 days.
After O'Neal was shot, Johnson — who was appointed superintendent in March — made it clear he wanted any video collected from dash and body cams released as soon as IPRA had completed its preliminary investigation. He also acted quickly to strip the three officers of their police powers, another move that earned him high marks from many, including the residents here on Merrill.
As a result, they said, they remain hopeful that relations between police and community can improve.
"He did it very promptly, and he was fairly transparent," Miller said of Johnson. "And that gives me hope."
Margaret Knighton, another resident, said she still feels safe in spite of the shooting and confident that neighbors will persevere through the turmoil of the last week.
"We're afraid, we're all in shock that this happened," she said. "But we're still going to be together."