Previously, on Somebody...

SHAPEARL: And so when they said that he was combative….

RENEE: We were shocked with that information. 

CLARESSA: We never got that report about him that he was combative.

BRENT: I know how he is and I know he didn’t do anything to pose a threat. 

CLARESSA: I remember him specifically being handcuffed to the bed. And so, we were like, “Ok, where's the police? We need these handcuffs off.”

My name is Shapearl Wells. This is the story of my son Courtney, a young black man in a fancy car, who wound up with a bullet in his back in front of a Chicago police station.

And it’s the story of my search for the truth. 

This is Somebody.

THEME: “Everybody’s Something” by Chance the Rapper

911: March 4, 2016. 1 hour 16 minutes and 53 seconds.

This is the last time you hear Courtney alive. Just moments after he was shot. 

It’s difficult to understand. But I hear my baby saying, “I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot.” 

COURTNEY : “I’ve been shot...I’ve been shot...” 

I felt as a mom like my baby, he’s hurt, and I can’t be there.  

When police gave me Courtney’s phone back, I went straight to his recent calls. And there it was. 9-1-1. But it took a whole year between me learning that this call existed and hearing it for myself.

SHAPEARL: Did my son dial 911?

POLICE: You tell me!

SHAPEARL: What do you mean? I’m asking you a question! Did Courtney Copeland dial 911?

POLICE: What do you think?

SHAPEARL: Absolutely. So why weren’t you...so why didn’t you inform me the first time we met?

That was a recording of my conversation with police. They never told me that they had 911 call on Courtney.

I wanted to hear the last moments of my son's life. I felt like as a mom I deserved that.

It had been over a year since they had contacted me about my son's death. 

I felt like my son had become a statistic. Like he was basically put on the shelf the day after he died.

And I was in a battle with the city to get them to release any and all videos that they had.

I wanted somebody, anybody, to hear me.

SHAPEARL: OK Facebook, I’m gonna try this again. Like I was saying, you know. We are the average black family trying to fight against a huge city, and everywhere we turn, we hear the doors getting slammed in our face.

And I was like God just help me to get to where I need to be. 

I was reading through articles. And I just happened to come across an article about Laquan. 

Laquan McDonald was the biggest cover up that the Chicago Police Department ever had in its existence far as I’m concerned. Laquan got shot sixteen times front and back. And he was running away from police. He was 17 years old. 

PROTESTERS: 16 shots and a coverup...16 shots and a coverup...16 shots and a coverup...16 shots and a coverup...16 shots and a coverup… 

Sixteen shots and a coverup. 

The police...the city…tried to hide what happened to Laquan. Until a judge forced them to release that video. 

CBS: Now the dashcam video shows Van Dyke shooting and killing seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014.

In the black community, none of us were surprised to see this. But the Laquan McDonald case got the whole country...talking about race and the police.

RACHEL MADDOW: For months, the only explanation offered for why Laquan McDonald died on that street was that an officer had fired at him in self-defense.

That’s Rachel Maddow.

RACHEL MADDOW: And Laquan McDonald had been shot in the chest. That was the public story about this case. The only thing that interrupted that public trajectory is that some very aggressive journalism happened in Chicago. 

I’d heard about this reporter, who blew open the case of Laquan McDonald...

RACHEL MADDOW: Mr. Kalven, thank you very much for your time tonight. I appreciate you being here.

JAMIE: It’s good to be with you.

RACHEL MADDOW: Um, you’ve been chasing the information on this case for so long…

I decided I would reach out to that reporter. Jamie Kalven. So I sent an email. I didn’t know if anyone would actually read my note. But before I knew it, I had someone from his organization on the phone.

SAM: So thank you for writing to us.

SHAPEARL: You know, I've been following what you did with Laquan, and just trying to, to get someone to listen to me, because it just doesn't add up.

A few days later, I was sitting down with Jamie. I brought all my papers with me, my files… I mean, I had everything.

JAMIE: I have such strong impressions of that day....so I do remember your coming and sitting right here at this table. Your ability to find in that stack of paper without file folders, tabs naming, to find whatever document you wanted, to illustrate a point you were making, which I still think of as a kind of card shark, you know, virtuosity.

When I walked him through the case, I didn’t know at the end of the conversation how it would go, what he would say. But I felt that he was listening to me.

JAMIE: I've had a lot of these conversations in the course of my career. None quite like this, because you laid out the sequences of events as you understood it, and identified the inconsistencies and anomalies and suspect things in the police account.

Jamie said that his journalism team would take the case. They call themselves the Invisible Institute.

When I first went there, I was like, “This really is invisible” ‘cause of the way it’s set back into a very secluded area. You’ll never know it exists. Like a little detective agency type of feeling. 

He actually referred me to his partner, Alison Flowers. 

ALISON: Hey, good to see you. How are you?

Alison is a journalist and she also works for the Invisible Institute. 

ALISON: I saw you’re busy this weekend moving your daughter into college, right?

ALISON: How are you? First, I just wanted to check in and see how your Mother’s Day was?

She’s so sweet but she’s a hardball. She will get the answers for you!

ALISON: How long were you there?

And Alison, you’re sitting next to me right now. 

ALISON: Let’s see we’ve known each other now for almost three years. 

SHAPEARL: Yes.

ALISON: It’s been a long road. 

SHAPEARL: Yes.

ALISON: And we’ve been in touch almost every single day.

SHAPEARL: Yes.

SHAPEARL: OK, Alison, I’m back.

ALISON: OK, hey Shapearl, I’m here with Jamie and Bill by the way.  

Bill’s with the Invisible Institute too.

BILL: Hi, Shapearl!

SHAPEARL: Hi, everyone.

ALISON: So, first of all Shapearl how are you feeling after...

I remember when I first met you I think we were downstairs in the coffee shop. And you were like very meticulous, you were taking notes. You had your list of questions. You had okay hey, we’re going to hit this, were going to do this, we’re going to do that. At this point, I was like, “Hey, I love her!” You know!

ALISON: I remember you being very measured. But I could also tell that you were in a lot of pain but it was almost sort of secondary to your drive. 

When I first met you, you told me what you believed happened to Courtney. That he died after an encounter with police and that this seemed like a traffic stop gone wrong. And you had all this information that you compiled. The handcuffing, The fact that there was no blood in the car. And the fact that they weren’t releasing the videos to you. And so you thought maybe Courtney was shot somewhere else. There were just a lot of unanswered questions at that time.      

SHAPEARL: From here on out, Alison is going to join me in this investigation.

ALISON: OK, let’s go. So, one of the first things we did was pull records for the police officers who were outside the station with Courtney.

There were a lot of officers on the scene. But there were two main players: Officer Andrew Block and Sergeant Sean Ronan.

When Courtney pulled up to the station, Officer Block was the first person he saw. Courtney got out of his car, and rushed over to him. He told him, “I’ve been shot.” And then he collapsed.

POLICE: Just got flagged down at Grand and Central, a gentleman just said he was shot. 

OEMC: OK we’ll get EMS rolling to the 25th District. 

POLICE: Oh, ok, yeah send an ambulance right away.

Block called an ambulance immediately. Which is protocol. And when we dug into his history, we didn’t see much. He’s now a lieutenant.

But then, there’s Sergeant Sean Ronan.

POLICE: Guys as soon as you can try to pinpoint a location, we’ve got broken glass at Belden and Long. It might’ve happened over here, so we’re just trying to figure it out.”

SHAPEARL: Ronan was the one running the show. 

ALISON: And when we checked out his history on the force, we found some alarming stuff. 

SHAPEARL: And he got a whole bunch of complaints against him. 

ALISON: Thirty complaints...that we’ve identified. More complaints than 89-percent of other Chicago Police Officers….Ronan’s been disciplined twice. That’s pretty unusual, given that most of the time, in Chicago, complaints are dismissed in favor of police officers.

SHAPEARL: There are descriptions of him calling a Black man a “n*gger.” A “motherfucker.” And a “stupidass gangbanger.”

ALISON: And Ronan has been accused of false arrest...planting evidence...slamming a man’s face into the concrete.

SHAPEARL: And in one case, he and some other officers were accused of throwing a man out a window, tasing and beating him, and then refusing him medical care.

ALISON: That case was settled. Ronan stayed on the force.

And then...there’s this…from 2017, the year after Courtney died.

ALISON: It’s a video of Ronan shooting at a man during a traffic stop. Six times. Police put in reports that the man pointed a gun at them. He survived.  

SHAPEARL: Oh my god. 

ALISON: And...Ronan was involved in another shooting -- but for that one, he was given one of Chicago Police’s top awards, the Superintendent’s Medal of Valor. 

I should note that most officers never fire their guns over their whole careers. So the fact that Ronan’s done this at least twice. That’s a big deal. 

When I was investigating Courtney’s murder on my own, the city of Chicago didn’t pay me any mind. 

But when the Invisible Institute came aboard, they changed their tune.

The Invisible Institute sent in a ton of record requests. Not just for the records of the officers on the scene, but for police videos, and the recordings from the scanner. 

And this got the attention of the detectives, finally.

SAM: Did he say why he was calling just out of the blue after fifteen months?

Here I am on the phone with one of the Invisible Institute reporters, Sam.

SHAPEARL: He said I know that you guys have been filing FOIA requests, and i told him, it’s your right to know.

I told Sam that the detective asked me to come down to the station.

SAM: Are you going to go?

SHAPEARL: I'm trying to figure out if I should go.

A few days later, I’m sitting down with those officers face to face. It’s been more than a year since our first and only meeting, just after Courtney died....and I’m recording. Once again. 

ALISON: When I first heard Shapearl’s police recordings...I was disturbed by the way the officers spoke to her...a grieving mother. 

We want to make sure there’s context to everything, so we’re going to let large unedited chunks of this tape play out.

SHAPEARL: The first time I met police in that dingy old building, I played along ‘cause I needed their help. The second time, I didn’t come to play with them. I needed answers. I need to know what happened to my son.

We sat across from each other at the conference table. White board. Vending machines. And Fluorescent lights. 

I brought in my big case file, which had the paramedics report. That said my son had been handcuffed. And claimed he was violent and combative.

SHAPEARL: This disturbs me, this disturbs me greatly, because of the fact that my son was handcuffed. I’m like, OK, if he collapses, at what point…

POLICE: He wasn’t. 

SHAPEARL: He was. He arrived at the hospital in handcuffs. There was a police officer that also followed the ambulance. And this is why I’m upset, because I’m like, how do you guys not know that my son was handcuffed?

They kept questioning what I’d uncovered.

SHAPEARL: When was he handcuffed, if you’re saying that he was handcuffed during transport?

POLICE: We never said he was handcuffed, ma’am.

SHAPEARL: OK, well it says that...

POLICE: That’s not a CPD document. That’s a CFD document. OK?

SHAPEARL: So OK you’re denying that he was...?

POLICE: No, no, I didn’t say that. Don’t put words...Please, please don’t put words in my mouth. I’m saying that that’s not a police department document. That’s a Chicago Fire Department document.

POLICE: ...first time seeing it, hon, we can review it and absorb the contents.

SHAPEARL: OK. Again, it says “handcuffs,” clearly.

POLICE: It’s obvious what it says.

They handcuffed my baby as he was dying, and they acted like it was routine.

POLICE: I mean we can see, read in the report, we can see why the handcuffs were necessary. 

POLICE : Or restraints, we’ll use restraints. 

POLICE: However he was restrained. Whether it was cuffs or foleys or whatever device. 

SHAPEARL: It specifically says ‘cuffs.

POLICE: Who’s telling you at the hospital that he was handcuffed?

SHAPEARL: Oh, the nurses, everybody told me.

POLICE: Who, though?

POLICE: Yeah, cause we’ll need to talk to them.

POLICE: Who specifically?

I gave them the E-R nurse’s name. Claressa Hawkins. She’s the one who’d told me that Courtney was handcuffed to the stretcher when he arrived at the hospital. 

They should have been with him in the ambulance. That’s the policy. 

SHAPEARL: Again, iIf you put handcuffs on a patient, you would also then in turn put that information into your file that says that this person was handcuffed.

POLICE: I’ve never done that.

SHAPEARL: Why not?

POLICE: Why would I?

SHAPEARL: Why wouldn’t you?

POLICE: Is he under arrest?

SHAPEARL: Who knows? You tell me.

POLICE: He was never under arrest.

SHAPEARL: I don’t know!

POLICE: But I’m telling you. Your son was...

SHAPEARL: I don’t know.

POLICE: Your son was...

SHAPEARL: It’s a lot of things that you told me that have not panned out.

POLICE: Such as what?

SHAPEARL: In regards to his uh, in regards to him, well. Here, I have some...

POLICE: No, no, no, you’re saying a lot of things, tell me one.

SHAPEARL: I’m gonna give you what I’ve been investigating in regards to this case.

POLICE: OK, you go ahead. Go ahead.

I felt angry, I felt like they were gaslighting me. Like they were sitting here lying in my face even though the proof is right in front of me. 

SHAPEARL: Okay, so again, at what point in time from him...

POLICE: What does that...? Does that have anything to do with us solving who shot him?

SHAPEARL: What I’m saying…

POLICE: John, does that have anything to do with us solving the crime?

POLICE: No. The bottom line is...

POLICE: So it’s not probative evidence?

POLICE: No.

What they’re saying is the fact that he was handcuffed, had nothing to do with solving his murder. 

POLICE: It’s not probative evidence to solving the crime of who shot your son, Ma’am.

SHAPEARL: Okay.

POLICE: ….which is what we want to do.

SHAPEARL: Okay.

POLICE: ….which is our end goal.

SHAPEARL: I want the whole story.

POLICE: ….which is our end goal. So what this...so what this tells you.

SHAPEARL: Calm down.

POLICE: I’m more than calm.

SHAPEARL: No, it doesn’t sound like it.

POLICE: Well, you know what? I’m just kind of this way.

Back and forth. Back and forth. This could have gone on forever.

I was mad as hell when they told me that they still had not even talked to the on scene officers after a year of investigating my son’s murder. They had their own reports and they just assumed what was written was true. And they were growing tired of listening to me. 

SHAPEARL: So you’re assuming that’s what the officer meant.

POLICE: (long sigh)

SHAPEARL: These are all assumptions. These are not facts.

Then they started talking very sarcastic to me, flipping through their reports. Saying to each other, “How many files you got there? It appears you put some work into it.” 

POLICE: It appears you put some work into it.

SHAPEARL: I’m not denying that he didn’t put any work into it. I’m just trying to make him more thorough. That’s my right. This my child.

They kept trying to tell me about the work they’d put into the case. 

POLICE: I spent a good amount of time driving around that neighborhood looking for video and trying to find video evidence. 

But they missed stuff. I know they did because I was talking to people they’d never talked to. And if I could have talked to the on-scene officers myself, I would have. 

SHAPEARL: So you’re saying with one hundred percent certainty that this is not a  possibility...

POLICE: So what you’re telling me is this: You believe that the police targeted your son and shot and killed him in front of the police station.

SHAPEARL: No, I believe that not enough has been done to solve Courtney’s murder.

POLICE: What would you like done that I haven’t done?

SHAPEARL: I personally would have went back and re-interviewed everybody.

POLICE: Re-interviewed the police?

SHAPEARL: Oh, absolutely.

POLICE: I’m not going to re-interview the police because the reports stand on their own. 

They assume police officers tell the truth. But I don’t.

SHAPEARL: Sgt. Mitchell. Based on the history that…

POLICE: No, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t even start. Why don’t you talk to me?

SHAPEARL: What I’m saying to you is that this problem didn’t just occur with Courtney Copeland’s case. The breakdown from the community and the police...

POLICE: I’m not here to talk politics with you ma’am. I’m here to talk reality.

SHAPEARL: I am talking reality.

POLICE: No, I’m here to talk reality about this case. No, you know what? I’m done. No. No,  no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

These white men were having none of my experience as a black woman in Chicago...

SHAPEARL: Your department has, not saying this particular, I’m just saying CPD in general has a history that has been tainted. And I know it’s unfair...

POLICE: Absolutely.

SHAPEARL: Okay.

POLICE: Especially to these two gentlemen in this room.

SHAPEARL: I’m just saying.

POLICE: Absolutely it is.

SHAPEARL: I know it’s unfair but that is just…

POLICE: But then why bring it up?

SHAPEARL: Because it’s the reality that we live in.

POLICE: No it’s not, it’s not with these two guys. Because I know them personally and I’ve worked with them.

SHAPEARL: I’m not saying that they did anything to my son.

POLICE: I take offense to that.

SHAPEARL: Why?

POLICE: I really do. Because you are painting with a broad brush, ma’am.

SHAPEARL: It’s not a broad brush when it’s an everyday reality for black and brown people in Chicago.

POLICE: You’re painting these guys with a broad brush.

SHAPEARL: Do you understand? OK, do you? Sergeant Mitchell, do you understand that’s a reality with black or brown people in Chicago or no?

POLICE: Ma’am. And I’m not telling you not with us.

I wanted them to understand that this wasn’t only my perspective.

POLICE: If I haven’t been clear on this, I apologize. Our goal, our stated goal here, is to find, arrest, charge, and convict the offenders who did this to your son. [God willing] That’s our stated goal. Okay. No variance, no nothing. No politics, no bullshit, no nothing. 

POLICE: And I’ll tell you something else, regardless of what you may think of me because I’m white…I really don’t care because I’ve been a policeman long enough where there are some people that just, this is what they have a problem with. I just want to let you know number one, I don’t have a problem with it. If that’s the way you feel, that’s the way you feel about me. That’s fine. No no no. But I just want to let you know.

POLICE: I want everyone to focus on this case... 

POLICE: But I want to let you know. You could spit on the floor when you see me it’s still not gonna affect me from working on this.

SHAPEARL: ... From doing your job

POLICE: And whether we never talk again or we become good….it doesn’t matter one way or another to me. If something good comes that I’m able to pick up and run with, I’m gonna run with it, with your son’s murder. And whether you thank me or tell me to get f*cked at the end of all of this, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. 

SHAPEARL: Well no, I’m definitely going to thank you because that’s my goal. I want to know why my 22 year old son was murdered. 

POLICE: So do I, so do I.

SHAPEARL: ...for no apparent reason.

POLICE: So do I. But as far as this whole black, brown, green shit, it doesn’t matter to me.

SHAPEARL: I’m saying you can’t discount the history of what happened.

It was time to go. But before I left, there was one more thing they wanted to be sure to say to me…

POLICE: This also bothered me from our conversation the other day. The fact that you’re recording me without my knowledge or consent. If you, If you ask me something, I’ll answer ya as truthful as I know, but, do not be surreptitiously recording me is all I’ll tell you.

SHAPEARL: Ok.

POLICE: It’s a crime.

POLICE: It’s a crime.

It’s actually not illegal.

POLICE: So I’m just telling you and I’m sure your attorney would tell you the same thing.

POLICE: Just like I can’t turn this on and record you. So...

SHAPEARL: I’m okay with being recorded.

POLICE: I know I know. Well I just have to let you know and I’m not okay being recorded, so just so you know.

SHAPEARL: I don’t have nothing to hide, so... 

POLICE: Neither do I. You do not have my consent to record me. It’s illegal. Just so you know cause I know you’ve been recording me every conversation. You were recording me from the first day that we met.

SHAPEARL: Why you say that? Do I have a reason to record you?

POLICE: I don’t know. Evidently you think you do because your whole focus on this thing is something the police did wrong.

I just wanted to know what happened to my son. And to me, nothing was off the table.

POLICE: What you’re saying is that he was calling 9-11 while he was on the phone, while the police were there? And then the police killed him.

SHAPEARL: I don’t know if the police killed him, I don’t know.

POLICE: Ma’am, good luck with your parallel investigation.

SHAPEARL: I don’t know. I don’t know.

POLICE: Good luck with it is all I’ll tell you. Good luck. ‘Cause if you get any answers that I don’t have, let me know.

SHAPEARL: What I’m saying is that I’m open to all scenarios.

POLICE: So am I.

By this time, the supervising sergeant had already walked out the room.

ALISON: Ready to go? OK. 

SHAPEARL: Let's hit it.

 ALISON: I got the documents.

I needed to find someone who would tell me the truth. Someone who was right there outside the police station.

I got the name of one of the EMTs who cared for Courtney at the scene. Daniel Cortez. Alison and I decided to knock on his front door. 

SHAPEARL: They probably think it's somebody electioneering.

ALISON: What do you feel? Do you want to write a note or do you want to call?  

Right as we were leaving, he opened the door. I had a mic clipped to my jacket, so that’s why it sounds a little fuzzy.

SHAPEARL: Oh. Hi. Hi. Are you Mr. Cortez? 

CORTEZ: Yes. 

SHAPEARL: Hi, my name if Shapearl Wells, you were one of the EMT's that actually worked on my son the night that he had passed away. And right now I'm actually chronic chronicling this journey in a documentary and I am recording right now. And I was wondering if you had a few moments if I could talk to you about. 

CORTEZ: Your son that passed away? 

SHAPEARL: Yes. Can I show you this picture?  

SHAPEARL: And it was on the...on Grand and Central.

I had Courtney’s flyer with me...the same one I had put up all over the neighborhood. And the picture of the BMW.

SHAPEARL: …and we were actually trying to get some information about his final moments. 

CORTEZ: I'm sorry ma'am but I don't recall much about it. I've been on the job for many years and it's a lot of runs, so I'm sorry. 

ALISON: Do you remember anything at all?

CORTEZ: Not that I can recall. 

ALISON: He was a black guy in a BMW shot in the back. 

CORTEZ: I can see his heritage.

We asked if he remembered Courtney being handcuffed. He says he didn’t recall. 

CORTEZ: I don’t recall. Sorry.

ALISON: You see a lot of gunshot victims handcuffed?

CORTEZ: I can't answer that. I don't know. I'm not sure, so.. 

ALISON: Because what she's concerned about are two things. One she really wants to know just his final moments which it sounds like you just don't remember. 

CORTEZ: No. 

ALISON: OK. And the other thing is it's very concerning to her that he was handcuffed. And this was before he was in the ambulance. And so.

CORTEZ: Okay. I don't know I'm not a police officer, I am a paramedic. OK so whatever their procedures are I don't know. But I know what we do. 

Paramedics don’t handcuff people. Cuffs...that’s for the police.

SHAPEARL: So you wouldn't have requested the handcuffs on a patient.?

CORTEZ: Unless they're being physically violent towards me. Unless someone's physically being violent towards me. Then I would have them arrested because of hitting me is like hitting a cop. 

ALISON: Do you remember that. 

CORTEZ: I don’t. No. I don't recall that I don’t remember any of that. 

ALISON: Do you remember this case at all?

CORTEZ: Not much. Yeah I've already explained that. So you can stop questioning. OK. 

ALISON: I’m sorry. I don't mean to be aggressive I just want to make sure I understand you.

CORTEZ: But I've already given you an answer. So that's an answer right.

ALISON: OK I understand. 

CORTEZ: Like Yes or no is an answer. 

ALISON: Sure. 

CORTEZ: I'm sorry for your loss, ma’am. 

SHAPEARL: Thank you. OK. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. 

CORTEZ: I apologize for not being a better help. I'm sorry for your loss. I hope you're at peace. God Bless. 

SHAPEARL: Thank you so much. OK. All right have a good day. God Bless. 

ALISON: Thank you, Mr. Cortez. 

SHAPEARL: Let me get this straight: He didn’t remember. He didn’t remember my son...who was right in front of the 25th district police station? I mean, like, how often does that happen? 

ALISON: Right, and there was one thing he specifically did not remember though. 

SHAPEARL: Yeah, he didn’t remember Courtney being combative. He did not say that Courtney was fighting, he was violent. But, this is the narrative that they wrote in their reports. I mean this whole case for me is about uncovering the truth but it’s also about clearing Courtney’s name.

I really needed to see the police videos for myself.   

After the Invisible Institute stepped in, all of a sudden, the city had no problems releasing the videos from the night Courtney died. 

They also released the police radio from that night.. Listen to this...

POLICE: 2522 Robert. 

DISPATCH: 2522 Robert.

POLICE: Victim is a male, his name is Courtney. Copeland. He gave me a date of birth of a....Give me a second. 

It’s hard to understand, but if you listen closely, the officer says, “He gave me a date of birth…” then he pauses. “He gave me a date of birth...” 

POLICE: He gave me a date of birth of a....

The detectives at the hospital told me Courtney didn’t say anything after he collapsed. But Courtney was talking to them...and giving them information. 

Finally, almost five hundred days after my son died, the city sent me a bunch of DVDs in the mail. I truly felt so sick about it cuz of what I was about to see, I braced myself and I popped the first one in the player in the bedroom. 

The disc wouldn’t even play. Because the city sent them in this crazy format, g64, which I’ve never even heard of. 

This was going to be the first time I was going to see the final moments of my son. And then for those videos not to play and they knew I wouldn’t be able to open this format. It’s like they were trying to make it impossible for me to find out the truth. 

But, about a week later, the folks from the Invisible Institute were able to convert the footage. And They brought it over to my house. 

SHAPEARL: Hi, come on in.

JAMIE: Thanks.

SHAPEARL: Thank you for coming.

JAMIE: So Rajiv, our technical wizard…has figured it out.

SHAPEARL: Oh thank you guys so much. Did you watch it?

JAMIE: I have not. Rajiv you know necessarily watched it...

SHAPEARL: So what’d you think of it?

RAJIV: I’m going to let you watch it. 

SHAPEARL: Oh lawd…

We sat around the dining room table. It was me, my mom, Brent, my mom, Courtney’s little sisters, and my Aunt Kim. 

 The videos came from four different cameras. The main one was in front of the police station. There were also other camera angles from around the block. 

Remember, it’s in the middle of the night. The video is kind of grainy and pretty bad. 

SHAPEARL: This is the police station right here.

RAJIV: Oh good you can see it. The address is in the file name too.

We see the BMW outside the station. The car is still running. We can see the smoke from the exhaust pipe. There are two police cars behind the BMW. 

Then another one shows up, with its lights on. It looks like Courtney’s car has been pulled over. But Courtney himself is nowhere in sight. 

Right then the camera swings away. 

SHAPEARL: Why would you move the camera here, you know it’s something going on over there?

RAJIV: I mean you can see the lights bouncing off. Right? You know there are cars. Right?

JAMIE: Yeah, yeah look at that. 

RAJIV: And you can see them increase as a few more cars come in. 

We don’t know why the camera turned away, or what’s going on. We still can’t see where Courtney is or what the police are doing. 

Finally, a few minutes later, the camera comes back to the scene. But still, no Courtney.

SHAPEARL: That looks like his jacket that’s there.

It was freezing that night. I know Courtney was wearing his peacoat when he was shot. There’s a bullet hole in the back. But here it is, crumpled up on the ground. 

SHAPEARL: Well, where is he?

We see a police officer looking through the back window of the BMW with a flashlight.

And then, the camera pans, and we see Courtney for the first time.

Courtney is laying on the ground on his elbows, and he’s shifting his weight. He was wearing a red Nike sweater. It was his favorite sweater. Courtney is surrounded by officers.

SHAPEARL: See right here? This is what the tow truck driver saw. See, Courtney is there on the ground. And, and wait a minute, look.

JAMIE: He’s trying to get up it looks like...

My son is on his hands and knees. He’s reaching up for somebody to help him. On the police radio, this is when they call for more officers to the scene. Courtney’s definitely not combative, he’s not violent or a danger to others. 

SHAPEARL: No, the EMTs are there now, right? No?

Now there’s an ambulance on the scene. There is an unmarked car blocking part of the camera’s view of Courtney.

Somebody - either a paramedic or a cop - is pulling him up, like fast and forcefully, from the ground. It looks like there could be a stretcher right there.

The video is really blurry here. You can’t really see what’s going on. But according to the paramedics report, this is the moment when Courtney was handcuffed.

JAMIE: So this may be where they’re handcuffing him.

SHAPEARL: This has to be. This is what they’re doing to him! This is what they doing to him!

FAMILY MEMBER: Handcuffing him?

SHAPEARL: They han...Oh My God! Oh Jesus!

FAMILY MEMBER: He doesn’t appear to be combative.

JAMIE: Right. Not combative. 

FAMILY MEMBER: He’s just trying to…

JAMIE: ...just  get to his feet. Yeah. Isn’t that what they’re doing right now? Look. 

Then Courtney was gone. Maybe he’s in the ambulance. All we know is that we don’t see him again.

My whole family, we were all at the dining room table, just holding on to each other.

We went back through the footage of Courtney’s driving and route to his girlfriend’s house...before he got shot.

Jamie pointed out that Courtney’s BMW was being followed...by two police cars. 

One marked, and one unmarked.

And then, these three cars, they disappear off the screen. 

And when we see Courtney next, he’s on the ground, reaching up for help. 

And he’s surrounded by police.

When the Invisible Institute came to my house with those police videos…and we saw Courtney, on his knees, shot, and begging for help…I saw for myself what I had already felt in my bones.

SHAPEARL: He’s like, “I’m shot I’m shot I’m shot.” The timestamp says...

Here’s what we saw: two police cars, following Courtney’s BMW. They’re all there, driving down the street.

The next time we see my son, he’s on the ground. In front of the police station. 

What happened during those moments we couldn’t see? Between him driving his car down the street, and ending up with a bullet in his back?

Everything was telling me that the police shot my son. 

I sat with this for a few days. I was by myself. My husband Brent was out of town. he drives a truck, so he was on his job. 

But then, Jamie from the Invisible Institute came back to my door. He re-examined those videos. And, he had new information. Information that changed everything.

JAMIE: The idea that the police were implicated seems much less likely now…. Okay? Which, as I say, I’m speaking for myself, is something of a relief…I mean we don’t want that to be true. Even though that would be a big story, but fundamentally we don’t want it to be true…

After he left, I called Brent and explained everything.   

BRENT: Hello?

SHAPEARL: Hey, can you talk?

BRENT: Yeah. You good?

He was out on the road...He drives a truck. So he was on his job….driving through the rain. 

SHAPEARL: The first car that we thought were the police? That was not Courtney’s vehicle in the lead.

BRENT: OK.

SHAPEARL: ...and they found some new evidence that said that it may have happened the way the police stated.

They looked at the car more closely. The shape of the trunk, the shape of the headlights, the windows. It did not match the structure of a BMW. 

It turns out, it was never Courtney’s BMW. We were looking at the wrong car. 

And… there IS a video showing Courtney’s actual car. And in it, he’s going down a side street. Not being followed by anyone. Speeding toward the police station.

One thing that Jamie said before he left the first time is that he told me, “Now, we have to go investigate our investigation.” And I’m glad he did. Because I wouldn't want to implicate wrongly anyone for this murder.

So now it seemed the police never followed Courtney’s car after all. That it may have happened like the police told us: Courtney was shot and then drove to the police for help.  

SHAPEARL: It’s still…you know, they still feel that he was treated kind of badly, but, they don’t necessarily believe that at this time, they actually did the shooting.

BRENT: How are you doing though?

SHAPEARL: I mean, it’s hard to swallow. You know, it’s hard to swallow. I mean, because Sunday I was feeling “okay, maybe they actually did do it,” but now I’m like, “okay, maybe they didn’t.” 

BRENT: We’re pretty much back at square one where we probably may still never find out who the killer is.

SHAPEARL: Right.

BRENT: Is it still raining back home?

SHAPEARL: Mmmhmm. Yeah, it’s just storming.

BRENT: Cause it’s like a typhoon out here.

SHAPEARL: Okay, babe, I just need to process all this.

BRENT: I’ll be there for you as soon as I can.

SHAPEARL: Alright, Love.

BRENT: Alright.

SHAPEARL: Bye.

BRENT: Bye.

When I thought police killed Courtney, it made me feel like his death served some type of higher purpose. 

Like Emmett Till. Or Laquan McDonald. 

Their killing actually woke up the country. With Emmett Till, when people saw how he was murdered, they were shocked to see such brutality. And the same with Laquan McDonald. 

With Courtney dying, if the police did it, it would have been a major coverup and it would have shook Chicago to the core.

But if cops didn’t kill him then his death just another unsolved Chicago murder.

I went from knowing who killed my son...to knowing...nothing.

SHAPEARL: I talked with the Invisible Institute folks. And Alison, you and Jamie told me that you’d stay on the case. And we’d start this all again.

But the way police treated Courtney still wasn’t okay. And it wasn’t just. 

We needed to reckon with this. 

And we needed to find out who really DID kill Courtney.

ALISON: So, that’s where we’re headed next. But first, we needed to better understand how we got this wrong. So, I sat down with Jamie to talk about it. 

JAMIE: So I think we were, in retrospect, predisposed to find that the police were implicated in the murder.

At the Invisible Institute, our goal is to hold public institutions accountable. And we see a lot of cases involving police abuse.

In the past decade, the City of Chicago has paid out more than half a billion dollars in police misconduct lawsuits.

All of this is true. And it influenced the way we saw those videos.

Now we had to walk back our assumptions, and start over again.

JAMIE: The metaphor of walking back an assumption feels exactly right. You’re really trying to reorient and reboot really the entire investigation. 

SHAPEARL: Alison, what has been your experience with police? 

ALISON: My perspective on the police has changed over time. When I was a kid, I thought, like a lot of white people do, that the police existed just to keep everybody safe. One time, I was in my twenties, and I thought someone was breaking into my apartment. So, I rushed into my closet and I called 911 and when the police came, they just told me it was a raccoon. It was just a raccoon.

SHAPEARL: Officer Friendly. 

ALISON: Then later, As a reporter, I’ve called on the police to help me with stories and I’ve also had to call out the police and report on their abuses of power. 

Now, I’m married, and my husband is black. And he’s been pulled over by police, searched by dogs. Twice. The last time this happened, he was actually on his way back from a job interview and wearing a suit.

We have a three year old son. And he was actually just a few months old when I met you, Shapearl. So your story about losing your son just hit me right in the gut.

SHAPEARL: I remember having the conversation with my son about how to interact with police. “Make sure you don’t reach for anything, Courtney.” “Be very calm.” “Be very polite and courteous.” “Yes Sir. Yes Ma’am.” You have to have these conversations. It’s like, it’s different for white people in America. And Black people in America. It has always been different. And there has always been a sense of I believe comfort for white people and a sense of fear for black people when it comes to police. 

ALISON: Right, I wasn’t raised to fear the police.

SHAPEARL: And we were. For me and Brent...our fear goes way way back. 

SHAPEARL: Both of our grandparents they grew up in the South. 

BRENT: Yeah.

SHAPEARL: You know, my grandmother was born in 1930.

BRENT: Yeah, my grandfather’s 1927 in Arkansas.

SHAPEARL: So, they saw a lot. And my grandmother actually had to flee from the South.

BRENT: As did mine.

SHAPEARL: ...because of all the hangings and the lynchings and everything like that. My grandmother used to always call them The Man. You know we had to flee from the Man. We had to leave because of The Man. She said that she only experienced some type of freedom when she came to Chicago….

SHAPEARL: I’m just glad that she didn’t see what happened to Courtney because I don’t think that she would be able to have survived it…. 

BRENT: Yeah...

SHAPEARL: Sometimes I just sit here and I just think like, I’m still in a daze. 

BRENT: There’s a rhyme that came to mind, that I heard back in high school, like senior year cuz it was talking about police and police brutality. and it said, “You were put here to protect us, but who protects us from you?”

SHAPEARL: I remember when Courtney was about six months old, it was the summer of 1994, and we were staying with my grandmother in the Englewood area. One day we were all sitting on the porch, just me and my cousins and my uncles.

And then all of a sudden, gangbangers just started shooting out of nowhere. 

And I remember my uncle grabbing Courtney out of my hands and rushing us up in the house upstairs so that we could be safe. 

I remember telling myself, “I cannot lose my son to these streets.” 

That day, I said, “I’m moving.” 

I lived out of my car for about two weeks until I was able to secure an apartment. 

I was like, “My son is going to have a chance of surviving.” And that was my goal was just to keep him safe. To keep him out of harm’s way so he can grow up and enjoy his life without worrying about being shot and killed in Chicago.

MEDICAL EXAMINER: Medical Examiner's Office please hold.

SHAPEARL: C-O-P-E-L-A-N-D. First name, Courtney.

MEDICAL EXAMINER: Um, can I have the date of passing?

SHAPEARL: Uh, 3-4-16.

I’d been dreading it, but I went back to the place where they did Courtney’s autopsy: the medical examiner’s office. 

MEDICAL EXAMINER: And how are you related?

SHAPEARL: The mom.

The last time I was there, I identified my son’s body on a metal slab.

MEDICAL EXAMINER: OK, that’s the doctor that did the examination. That’s the case number. And then this is the doctor’s assistant. She’ll be able to speak with you and maybe set up something where you guys can speak about it and clarify everything. 

I was there because now my son’s case was coming down to two questions. 

One...who killed Courtney? I promise you, we’re gonna dig into that soon.

And two...did police do everything they could to help him? 

SHAPEARL: OK, thank you, thank you so much.

MEDICAL EXAMINER: No problem!

I needed to know if my son could have survived this injury.

There’s a note in the hospital records that Courtney’s aorta got hit. That’s the main artery in the body. But the autopsy report says nothing about the aorta getting hit. In fact, it says it was “intact.”

SHAPEARL: So I just left the M-E's office, I wanna know, but I don't wanna know. So anyway, I'm going to give them a call and see what they say. Hopefully they could answer these pressing questions.

The aorta getting hit… means he would have bled out within minutes. 

ALISON: And this all mattered because there were delays in Courtney’s case. 

SHAPEARL: Yes, I felt that they took too long to get him to the hospital. From the time that he was on the scene in front of the police station until the time that they drove off in the ambulance, it was about thirteen minutes.

SHAPEARL: Every part of me wants to believe that my son could have survived. Every part of me. Every part of me wants to believe that I had time to get to him. Every part of me wants to believe that.

ALISON: So, Shapearl, you were waiting to get answers from the medical examiner. And we had already tried to talk to Courtney’s surgeon, but the hospital wouldn’t let her speak to us. So in the meantime, we turned to other medical experts to look at the case. 

CHANG: From the coroner's report, it appeared that the bullet went through his lung, and then it was lodged somewhere in the muscles of his left neck.

ALISON: Grace Chang is a trauma surgeon at Mount Sinai, a hospital on Chicago’s West Side. We actually talked to three trauma surgeons -- but Dr. Chang was the only one who’d go on the record. 

And right away, she told us something that helped us understand why there was no blood in Courtney’s car - because he wasn’t just bleeding out, he was bleeding in. 

CHANG: You could say his chest cavity was filling with blood.

ALISON: Yeah, OK that's a pretty large receptacle. It can hold a lot.

CHANG: It can hold several liters of blood...

Dr. Chang described the emergency surgery, when doctors opened up Courtney’s chest.

CHANG: You go in there, you resuscitate their heart and you can also fix and stop the bleeding so that’s why you do that.

She also noticed the discrepancy between the surgeon’s report and the autopsy report about the aorta.

CHANG: Had it gone through the aorta, typically that's not a survivable injury either.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

SHAPEARL: So that’s why I marched my butt down to the medical examiner’s office for answers. Was Courtney’s aorta hit or not? Did he have a chance or not?

And the next day, they called me back. 

Alison and I hopped right on the phone right after.

SHAPEARL: She said well her findings when she did the autopsy she didn't find any damage to the aorta, so that’s why she didn’t include it in her autopsy. And she was like, you know he did bleed out. She said you could tell that by the amount of blood that was in his chest.

She had actually reviewed his file again and she said that his aorta was intact.

SHAPEARL: It still brings me back to...had they taken him to the hospital right away. Because he's begging them. Help me, help me. Don't stand around looking at me, help me, get me to the hospital! For the life of me, for the life of me, Alison, I can't say that he would have survived. I can’t say a hundred percent. I just wanted them to give him a chance. They didn't give him a chance.

ALISON: Courtney’s heart stopped in the ambulance, four minutes before he arrived at the hospital. 

If he had got there just a few minutes earlier - maybe he could have been saved. 

So every delay mattered.

We kept coming back to the fact that Courtney was handcuffed. 

Reports say it was because he was combative.

And by the way, It’s not uncommon for trauma patients to present as “combative”. Especially when they’re losing lung function.

But handcuffs aren’t used when trauma patients are combative.  

A spokesperson for the Chicago Fire Department told me their paramedics don't use handcuffs, they don't have handcuffs, and they don't restrain people with handcuffs. We exchanged dozens of emails.

But then, when we asked the spokesperson about Courtney’s case specifically, that’s when their story changed. He told me they requested cuffs because Courtney was “flailing” in the street before paramedics arrived. But that’s just not what the video shows.   

SHAPEARL: It doesn’t make sense. 

ALISON: Well, we know at this point that they had his plates and they had his name. And they knew that the car wasn’t registered to him. 

SHAPEARL: Yeah. And they were treating him as a suspect more than a victim. That’s just the bottom line. You can see him reaching up, begging them for help. You see this on this tape. And the fact that they’re saying that their only resolution was to handcuff him. I just know that they wouldn’t have done this to somebody who was white.   

ALISON: OK. Let me just pull up the video. It’s about roughly nineteen minutes into the video but um...Okay, he’s the guy in the red hoodie.

RUSHIN: I mean looking at this segment of the video, it looks as if he’s lying there mostly immobile as police are kind of standing up around him.... 

ALISON: Stephen Rushin is a professor at Loyola Law School. He specializes in police reform. We wanted his take on the police’s treatment of Courtney. 

So we watched the footage together of Courtney outside the police station. And there’s a crowd of officers, just milling around. 

ALISON: It does not look to me as though he’s receiving any medical treatment.

RUSHIN: No, it looks like he's being treated like a suspect. Cause I think one thing we haven't yet talked about is the number of officers around him. All of which is relevant if you're gonna say he's a threat, if he’s a risk to other people. A threat to the officers. You have 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 officers it looks like. And, yeah, if you hadn’t put this in context for me, it looks like they are handcuffing a suspect to bring him in, for an arrest. 

There were at least eleven police officers on the scene. I asked Rushin about another fact...there were no police onboard the ambulance to unlock the handcuffs. Courtney’s ER nurse, Claressa Hawkins, told us they couldn’t get to work on Courtney right away, because they had to wait for police to arrive.

ALISON: If they're arresting someone who is suffering a life-threatening wound, and that person has to go to the hospital and they’re in cuffs, do you know whether the police have to accompany? In the ambulance? Follow? Cause I think they would need to be there to like unhandcuff it, right?

RUSHIN: I mean that’s just logical.

ALISON: ...but in this case, they weren’t in the ambulance....

RUSHIN: Yeah, and as a lawyer that starts sounding like a civil liability issue there immediately, right?

What Rushin is saying is this....by handcuffing Courtney and not going with him in the ambulance...police officers may have stood in the way of Courtney’s life-saving treatment.

SHAPEARL: There’s another delay that also bothered me.

Courtney was shot on the Northwest side of Chicago but got transported all the way east to Illinois Masonic Hospital in the Lakeview neighborhood.

Paramedics in Illinois are supposed to take the gunshot victims to the closest trauma center that can take them.

The closest trauma center? Was not Illinois Masonic.

But maybe it was the fastest one to get to that night? Nope. We checked that out too.

ALISON: So, we found out that there were actually two other trauma centers that were closer and faster to get to. Stroger and Mt. Sinai. Not dramatically closer but when we’re talking about life or death, minutes really do matter. It could have saved him another five to ten minutes on the road. We looked at all different routes, times of day and traffic patterns.

SHAPEARL: And why these four or five or even ten minutes matters? Is because my son’s heart stopped four minutes before getting to the hospital. 

Everyday, I can’t help thinking about the difference those few minutes could have made. 

ALISON: I mean, what do you do with this information?

SHAPEARL: None of this makes sense to me, I swear to God, none of this makes sense. It just hurts my heart. It hurts my heart, I tell you.

ALISON: I'm sorry. I think Courtney is, you know, I don't want to say he's lucky, because what happened to him was so unlucky, but if you’re gonna have any mom in the world to get answers for you, you'd want it to be Shapearl Wells.

SHAPEARL: Police never found any physical evidence in the car...just some broken glass on the street.

The state crime lab analyzed bullet fragment lodged in Courtney’s neck...and the bullet jacket...but it just wasn’t enough to identify a gun.

But we knew a neighbor heard two shots. So where’s the other bullet?

BRUNDAGE: I'm just surprised that there wasn't anything recovered from the autopsy, or in the car. That’s just...it's just kind of amazing that there was nothing.

We talked to this firearms forensics expert, David Brundage. He said he was surprised police didn’t find anything when they processed the car. The police searched the car on-scene. But he said, they should have also searched the car under better lighting, like in an open garage. 

SHAPEARL: I’ma pull it right now.

ALISON: Okay. So actually let me get my evidence bag ready.

SHAPEARL: OK.

Brundage told us that sometimes bullets can hide in the seams of car seats. They just leave tiny slits. And until you remove the seat and search, you’ll never know. It could actually lead us to the murder weapon.

He said the second bullet might still be in the car, and gave us instructions on how to search for it.

So, we found a BMW-certified mechanic at a little auto shop in the suburbs. He agreed to help us take the car apart.

MECHANIC: So what we’re going to do is actually unbolt the seat from its frame. Then we’re going to take the entire seat up and take it out of the vehicle. 

ALISON: Okay, and then where are you going to put it? Because we need to examine the seat. 

MECHANIC: Wherever you want. 

We took out the front seats. After all this time, we saw some broken glass. 

ALISON: Alright Shapearl. You want to go ahead and grab that glass? How many pieces is that? One two three four five six...

SHAPEARL: So if we don't find anything here, where is the bullet?

We kept searching, but we didn’t find a bullet. We did find some debris that looked like it could be something, so we put it in evidence bags.

We sent them back to the firearms forensics expert. And we waited. When we got the news, we were disappointed. 

ALISON: I am guessing you have some sort of new thing to report. 

DAVID: Yes. I’ve, well, this is not very very informative but I finished looking at the physical items that you shipped to me……...I did find one kernel of gunpowder. 

ALISON: Oh, wow, ok.

ALISON: He told us when he looked at it under a microscope, all he could see was the gunpowder was likely from the Winchester Olin Corporation, which sells to a number of ammunition companies. It could have been used in almost any type of gun.

SHAPEARL: Well, at least we looked...because our investigation was gonna be thorough. 

ALISON: Now that we were rebooting the investigation, we all returned to the street where we believe Courtney was shot. The spot where his friends first collected broken glass...and saw skid marks…and where a neighbor said she heard shots fired.

SHAPEARL: Courtney was shot on Chicago’s Northwest Side. It’s a neighborhood called Belmont-Cragin. I went out there right after Courtney died, putting up posters, knocking on doors, begging somebody to tell me something. 

ALISON: We knew that you had already covered this ground. But now, we wanted to hit every single house between there and the police station. We needed to find witnesses.

ALISON: Shapearl’s gonna lead the way. How many cars...How many spots do you have, Shapearl?

SHAPEARL: I got three. I got the seats down but I got three spots.

We set out with a crew. A group of journalism students, of course you Shapearl, me and our producer Bill.

So Shapearl we’re in your van. The same one that you used to haul Courtney and his buddies to basketball games as they were growing up. And I noticed a strawberry air freshner dangling from your rearview mirror. And this necklace that belonged to Courtney. 

SHAPEARL: The necklace was a medallion that he had earned from World Ventures. It reminds me of him and it makes me feel close to him. 

ALISON: So, the first thing you wanted to show us was the police cameras near the station.

SHAPEARL: That's the camera that rotates. You see all these cameras? Boom boom boom. It's like cadrillion cameras right here. And you telling me you don’t have any cameras…. 

BILL: Excuse me, m’am. Do you live in this neighborhood? 

We drove over to the intersection of Grand and Central, the police station where Courtney collapsed on the ground.

We put on our blinkers, and we got out.

SHAPEARL: Uh, it looks like they still have his photo up. I'm gonna check.

Bill and I are at the light pole on the corner. And there was a flyer with Courtney’s face on it. It was one of the reward posters I had put up, more than a year before. 

Bill and I stood on the side of the street…right outside the police station.

SHAPEARL: Yeah, his photo is still there. They were tearing ‘em all down, but I'm glad to see that this one is still up. That’s him. It's been...almost two years. See everything right now is a mystery. Everything. Because it's not just about police killing black people. ​But it's also about them allowing them to die​. To him, he was nothing but a nigga on the street, who got shot. I feel that, sometimes, you know, when you go through these situations, the dead can no longer speak, so you have to do it for them.

Right in the middle of all of this, a cop pulls up behind us. He asks Bill if we got into an accident...

POLICE: Did you get in an accident?

BILL: No, we're good, you know…

POLICE: Is there a reason why you guys are blocking traffic? In the middle of Grand Avenue?

BILL: Right, her son died right here…

POLICE: I...

BILL: ...Right, and so we're uh...

POLICE: I feel bad for that, but I mean you guys could have parked over here, this way you're not putting yourselves in danger.

Move out of the way. Don’t block traffic. We called it a day.

BILL: Bye, Shapearl. Thanks.