Three gunshots cracked the air close to where police were investigating a Chicago shooting early Friday.
“Run, b—-, run!” a young shirtless man shouted as officers sprinted down an alley to check out the gunfire. Then, with mock concern, he added: “Hey, there’s somebody dead in the alley!”
There was no one dead in the alley. Police suspected the shots were a prank by a group of young men who had been heckling them for about an hour at the scene of a shooting that wounded a 22-year-old man in the 7100 block of South Paulina Street about 12:50 a.m.
Standing in a line not far from the crime scene tape, they had been alternately threatening and teasing the officers.
“You a traitor! You a traitor! You bogus as hell!” one of them said early on, focusing on the only black officer nearby.
Some of the officers returned the taunts, telling them to get jobs and calling out to the block that the men were snitches. “You’ve been talking to me for a year, don’t play in front of your boys!” a sergeant teased.
One officer grabbed his phone and held it out to face the crowd. “Hey, say it again,” he said. “This is going on YouTube.”
They answered him with a chorus of “F— the police!”
