A judge Monday sentenced a Chicago police officer to five years in prison in connection to a 2013 shooting that injured two teenagers.
Police dashcam video captured the moment Officer Marco Proano fired his service weapon into a car full of teenagers the night of December 22, 2013.
Investigators found that he fired 16 shots in all, and a grand jury indicted Proano in 2016 on charges that he violated the civil rights of the teens – whose families already reached a civil settlement with the City of Chicago.
Proano was charged with two counts of unreasonable use of force, with each count carrying a maximum sentence of 19 years in prison.
The trial marked the first time in at least 15 years that a Chicago police officer faced federal criminal charges in connection with an on-duty shooting.
When he was charged, Proano’s attorney, Dan Herbert, said the shooting was justified because the car was stolen and another officer saw a gun inside.
“The reality is these shootings are ugly and they show situations that, to the public and the uninformed and uneducated when it comes to police work, they look like bad shootings,” Herbert said at the time, who also represents Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, facing murder charges in the high-profile shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
“When you find out the facts, when you find out what is happening and, most importantly, when you find out how these police officers were trained by their supervisors, their leaders, to do exactly what he did. Now they are turning their back on him,” Herbert continued.
A 10-year veteran of the force, Proano was suspended without pay since the shooting, and the Independent Police Review Authority recommended that he be fired.
