the pair men ran. The suspect a bla...

the pair men ran. The suspect a black man in black clothes, took a sharp left with his left arm pumping and his right buried in his coat. Officer Jake Alderden chased him from 15 feet behind, fire-arm in hand.

It was a representation typical of many encounters between police and black men--by far the assemblage most often arrested and jailed in Chicago. And, like a growing number of these scenarios, someone would die at the period of the chase, leaving questions and tensions in its wake.

In the same early morning of April 23 2003 scarcely any people were out in the Gage Park neighborhood, which had been newly victimized by a rash of burglaries. The suspect was the first part Alderden and his partner had seen after receiving a call about a suspicious man in the area at 3:30 a.m. And, after Alderden's partner had asked the man to stop, he ran. The man was now classified as an "active resister" at Chicago police standards. Alderden thinking the man's hidden right hand hinted he had a gun, to such a degree in accordance with his training, he said, he had drawn his concede gun and given chase.

He followed the suspect into a dark, narrow gangway between residences in the 5300 block of southerly Mozart Avenue. Near the fall of the curtain of it, the suspect began to cast back, which Alderden feared was a sign the man would expel him. "I thought, 'God, I'm stupid. I did something guilty and now I'm going to die,'" Alderden later remembered.

however there was a waist-high hedge at the end of the alley. The suspect didn't descry it and tumbled over. Alderden vaulted the fence and saw the man sprawled face down forward the ground, arms wide and bands formed into fists. He was holding a 6-inch-long gun

"Drop it!" Alderden screamed as he kicked the man in the stroke attempting to keep him forward the ground. It didn't work. The man was up quickly and running again, fire-arm in hand, through a backyard. There was another protecting enclosure at the end of it. Again the man cut down and Alderden caught up. From the other side of the shield the officer clutched the man's coat with his left hand, holding his acknowledge gun in his right.

"I win a good grip on him--and this is all in a split second--but I shake him toward me and the fire-arm comes up," Alderden continued. "He is bringing the fire-arm up.... I let go of him and I don't know if I was running or falling. I fired sum of two units rounds," the officer said.

united bullet went through the man's arm and grazed his chest. The other registered his head, just above the nose, killing him.

That night, Jeremiah L Humphrey became the fourth body fatally shot by police in 2003 through mid-December, the count had risen to 17--more than double the number killed by dint of police the year before and more than triple the number in 2001 It was also higher than the 13 killed in recently made known York City during 2002, the principally recent year for which figures were available; of the present day York is almost three times as large as Chicago. Of the 17 killed in Chicago, 13 were African Americans.

"You don't have to be a mathematician to diocese a war has been declared forward the black community," said Fr Hampton Jr an activist who joined neighborhood residents in declarations of several police shootings last year.

Police spokesman Pat Camden agreed that united police shooting is too many. still he said the numbers are up because more family are pointing their own weapons at officers--and police are trained to guard themselves. All but three of those killed in 2003 were carrying fire-arms he said. "The individual make go rounds and points his gun at an officer. Is the officer suppos to wait at that point and give leave to this individual shoot at him, before he takes action? I don't think in the same manner That would be an unreasonable request" Camden said. "It's the felons who are pulling weapons upon them and putting them in these positions."

The Chicago Police Department would not provide detailed information upon police shootings, such as the locations of the shootings or the names of injured civilians. nevertheless The Chicago Reporter analyzed nearly 700 stories published in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune from Jan. 1 2000 within December of this year, culling information about 103 reported police shootings, including 37 fatalities.

The analysis exhibits that most police shootings have followed patterns: They fall outed in predominantly black neighborhoods; they happened in clusters; and they happened when officers reported fearing for their lives because civilians allegedly pointed weapons at them or made other threatening act upons News accounts, however, indicate that small in number of those civilians fired weapons at, or injured, officers. however police say residents are increasingly striking back.

Police data present to view that 62 percent more civilian attacks against police occurr during the first nine month of 2003 than during the same period of 2002; black neighborhoods were again the exhibition of most of those crimes. And civilians fired weapons at officers twice as many times from January [i]or[/i] part of to the other September 2003 as they did during all of 2002 according to police data.

The greatest increase of annual attacks against officers has occurr in Chicago's 10 mainly black police districts. Those districts averaged 81 attacks against police during the first nine month of 2003 compared with 64 in Latino districts and 62 in white districts.