#Whentheyseeus: Chicago review board reopens case five years after cops killed Black teen

Nearly five years after a Black Chicago teenager was shot and killed by police, new evidence may help his mother get a better insight on what exactly happened to him.

Roshad McIntosh, 19, was shot and killed in August 2014. U.S. District Court Judge Jorge L. Alonso of Chicago this week ruled to reopen discovery in the teen’s wrongful death federal lawsuit, CNN reports.

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The original investigation was conducted by Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority(IPRA), which is now called COPA, failed to find wrongdoing by officers in the shooting. The officer involved claimed Roshad pointed a gun at him, the officer fired three shots, which resulted in the teen’s death. The IPRA found the shooting to be “within policy,” and the agency closed the case by October 2015, according to CNN.

But the Roshad’s mother, Cynthia Lane, was not convinced. She filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court against the city of Chicago after the IPRA failed to take disciplinary action against officers involved in the shooting, and the Cook County Attorney failed to file any charges.

“We’ve never believed the narrative given by the police in this case,” Andrew Stroth, Lane’s attorney, said.

This is when Lane decided to take matters into her own hands and began to request her son’s hospital and paramedic records from the day of the shooting.

COPA reopened the case in August 2017, and it remains open.

The reopening of discovery gives Stroth and his team access to all the documents, data, transcripts and exhibits generated by COPA’s re-investigation. It will also allow him to to interview witnesses who were questioned previously by the agency.

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“It makes me more confident in getting justice and that’s what I’ve wanted from the beginning,” Lane said.

The discovery deadline of September 30, 2019 was set by Judge Alonso, CNN notes, citing court documents. The documents also note that the deadline could be extended.

Ava DuVernay’s compelling Netflix dramatization When They See Us has been viewed by more than 23 million accounts on the streaming platform. The film tells the story of five Black and Latino boys, who were coerced into confessing to a brutal rape inside New York’s Central Park has been a hard-hitting reality check on the injustices handed down by the American court system after they were wrongly convicted in 1989. Since the series’ release, the title has come to represent how the justice treats men and women of color.

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