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Late on the night of July 25, 13-year-old Jimmell Cannon was out playing in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, celebrating a cousin’s birthday with other family members. Cannon’s family said that the boy and a few other kids had wandered a bit away from the park area near Piccolo Specialty School where they were gathered. Around 11 p.m., he was shot multiple times by a police officer.

According to a Chicago Police Department statement, officers were responding to a call of shots fired in the area, and Cannon matched the description of the gunman. When officers tried to stop him, he fled. Police say that Cannon was shot after producing a weapon and pointing it at them, ignoring orders to drop it. The weapon turned out to be a BB gun, cops say.

Cannon’s family members and a witness say there was no BB gun, that Cannon had run away because he got scared, and that his hands were in the air when he was struck in the shoulders, hand and leg.

The incident is one of 43 police-involved shootings in Chicago so far this year, according to the Independent Police Review Authority. That’s nearly as many as in all of 2010. At least 16 people have been killed in police shootings already this year, more than the 13 total fatal shootings all last year.

Explanations vary among law enforcement officials and community advocates on what may be behind the uptick in police violence.

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