Adam Toledo

Adam Toledo (May 26, 2007 – March 29, 2021) was a Mexican American boy who was killed during a police foot chase, after being shot with his hands raised. Chicago police officer Eric Stillman was not charged for Toledo's death. A series of protests against police brutality developed across Chicago and around the United States.

Quotes about Adam Toledo

2021

• The shooting of Adam Toledo is more controversial and nuanced. The thirteen-year-old - whose gang nickname was apparently "L'il Homicide - had fired a gun that he was still holding when the police confronted him and his twenty one-year-old accomplice in a dark alley. Toledo threw his gun behind a fence, but it is unclear whether Officer Stillman knew he was no longer armed when he pulled the trigger less than a second after Toledo threw his gun behind the fence, out of the view of the officer.
  • Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Color-Blind Equality in an Age of Identity Politics (Hot Books, 2021)

• the world ended in an
  alley for a thirteen year
  old Mexican-American
  boy when a raging white
  cop pulled his pistol out
  and shot this child with
  both hands raised dead
  but the ears cut off by
  the police propaganda
  office manufactured a
  different story about the
  horror committed by a
  white man with a badge.
  when the boy was chased
  into the alley he felt it could
  be his final breath and the
  world made in the image
  of the cop would not call
  it murder. Adam Toledo
  died once in that alley and
  we have died more than a
  thousand times in the last
  year at the hands of men
  and women who don't give a
  shit about Black and Brown
  lives. mothers are begging
  for their children, our night
  sweats leave us drenched
  and there is no escaping the
  hell that carves its initials
  on our dark backs! fuck,
  the least I can do is never
  let your white world forget
  its sin!
  • Harold J. Recinos, Where the Sidewalks Meet (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2021)

2022

• Toledo appeared to raise his hands right before Stillman fired one shot and then ran to the boy as he fell to the ground. "Shots fired, shots fired. Get an ambulance over here now," the police officer was heard saying in the video. "Stay with me, stay with me," Stillman said. "Somebody bring the medical kit now!" The Chicago Police Department said immediately following the incident that Toledo had a gun in his hand. The gun had been dropped long before Stillman shot Toledo, after Toledo had put his hands into the air... Toledo complied with Officer Stillman's orders, dropped his weapon and turned around, hands up, before the officer opened fire.
  • Adebowale Akande, Get Your Knees Off Our Necks (Springer International Publishing, 2022)

• The footage shows a young boy, Adam Toledo, standing unarmed in an alleyway with a recently discarded handgun on the ground. Officer Stillman rushes to Adam and screams "show me your fucking hands," and Adam immediately thrusts his empty hands into the air in compliance .838 milliseconds (about five-sixths of a second) after Stillman shouted his demand, Stillman shot and killed Adam.
  • Shawn E. Fields, Neighborhood Watch: Policing White Spaces in America (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

2023

• Adam's death rapidly became a site of contestation. Community residents, politicians, political pundits, and others expressed personal conjectures on the events that transpired on 29 March. On one end, people vilified him and his family, going as far as blaming Adam for his own death, alleging that the murder by police officer Eric Stillman was justified. On the other end, there were clear attempts at rejecting the stigmatized narrative of victim blaming, and a push for police accountability in the form of an eventual abolition of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) ensued by young people, which called for a defunding of the city's police department and a reinvestment of funds into neighborhoods that have historically experienced gun violence, including from police.
  • Jennifer M. Ortiz, Critical and Intersectional Gang Studies (Taylor & Francis, 2023)

See also

• Black Lives Matter
• Defund the police
• Racism