(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- City officials confirmed Wednesday that they would once again be deploying large municipal vehicles in a preemptive effort to discourage looting after a watchdog agency released footage of the fatal police shooting last month of 22-year-old Anthony Alvarez in Portage Park.
The Office of Emergency Management and Communications said the deployment of salt spreaders, snow plows and garbage trucks was being done “out of an abundance of caution.” The vehicles would help “enhance the safety of both residents and our commercial corridors citywide,” OEMC said.
The body-camera footage, released Wednesday afternoon, shows an officer shoot Alvarez in the back as he runs away from the officer with a gun in his hand March 31 in the 5200 block of West Eddy Street.
It was the second time Chicago police shot and killed a Latino male in three days last month. Two days earlier, 13-year-old Adam Toledo was slain by a Chicago police officer in Little Village.
Body-camera footage of that shooting appears to show Adam dropping a gun and turning around with his hands raised before the officer shoots him once in the chest.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and attorneys representing the Alvarez family issued a joint statement Wednesday morning asking for people who wish to “express themselves” in response to the video “do so peacefully and with respect for our communities and the residents of Chicago.”
The city first began deploying municipal trucks to protect businesses last summer, when businesses around Chicago were looted and vandalized after protests against a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd last May were held here and across the nation.
Lightfoot’s administration also raised the bridges into downtown.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire & Chicago Sun-Times 2021. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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