Search fatalities

Turell Brown

Age : 28

Gender : Male

Race : Black

Date : 09/19/2021

Location : 6500 block of South Harvard Avenue

City : Chicago

County : Cook

State : Illinois

Agency : Chicago Police Department

Officer(s) :Brandon Rambert

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during domestic disturbance call

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/19/2021, Chicago Police Department Officer Brandon Rambert shot and killed 28-year-old Turell Brown inside the Englewood apartment Brown shared with his girlfriend in the 6500 block of South Harvard Avenue. Initial reporting did not identify Rambert, but a later Cook County State’s Attorney police-involved-death review definitively named him as the officer who fired the fatal shots.
.
Police responded at approximately 10:55 a.m. to a domestic disturbance. Brown’s girlfriend told officers that she and Brown had argued while she was doing laundry and that Brown had struck her. She told police Brown was in a back room and had a knife.
.
Body-camera footage subsequently released by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability shows the officers initially speaking calmly with Brown’s girlfriend. As an officer moved toward the rear of the apartment, Brown could be heard yelling, and the officers backed toward the apartment entrance.
.
Brown then appeared from the rear portion of the apartment holding a knife. Officers repeatedly ordered him to drop it. The body-camera video shows Brown moving toward the officers as they stood near the doorway. At points during the encounter, Brown’s hands and the knife are partially obscured by the apartment walls and the camera angle.
.
The fatal encounter unfolded rapidly. Brown moved closer to the officers and appeared to extend his right arm toward the apartment door while the knife was in his left hand. Rambert fired three shots, striking Brown. The knife fell near him after he was shot.
.
Officers immediately began providing medical aid, including chest compressions. Brown was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
.
The shooting was investigated by COPA, while the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Law Enforcement Accountability Division separately reviewed whether Rambert should face criminal prosecution. Investigators reviewed civilian and police witnesses, 911 and emergency communications, photographs, police reports, medical and autopsy records, forensic evidence, surveillance recordings and body-camera footage.
.
The State’s Attorney ultimately declined to prosecute Rambert, concluding that the available evidence was insufficient to support criminal charges against him. The later decision memorandum is particularly important because it supplies the shooting officer’s identity and considerably more detail than the original 2021 news coverage.
.
Brown’s family did question the police use of deadly force immediately after his death. His mother, Angela Brown, said the family wanted to know why police killed him rather than using another method to subdue him. Family members emphasized that Brown had recently graduated from welding school and had celebrated his 28th birthday only days before his death.
.
The family's questioning is especially relevant because the subsequent release of body-camera footage allowed the public to examine the final seconds independently rather than relying entirely on the original police description. The footage confirms that Brown possessed a knife and that officers repeatedly ordered him to drop it, while also documenting how quickly the confrontation progressed immediately before Rambert fired.
.
OFFICER BACKGROUND
Brandon Rambert was the Chicago police officer who shot and killed Brown. Rambert fired three rounds during the encounter. His identity, omitted from the initial public reporting, was subsequently established in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s formal review.
.
The broader departmental context is particularly significant. At the time Rambert killed Brown, the Chicago Police Department was operating under a federal court-enforced consent decree created after the U.S. Department of Justice investigation of CPD found systemic problems involving excessive force, accountability, training, supervision and policing practices. The decree required extensive reforms of CPD’s use-of-force and accountability systems.
.
The circumstances of Brown’s killing intersect directly with areas at the heart of those reforms: de-escalation, tactical decision-making and the use of deadly force. Unlike many older Chicago police killings, however, this encounter was captured on body cameras and subsequently released publicly by COPA, creating a substantially stronger evidentiary record of the officers’ actions.
.
Brown’s death also came during a period when Chicago’s police-reform process remained unfinished. The consent decree had been imposed precisely because longstanding departmental practices could not be adequately addressed through CPD’s previous internal accountability system. That institutional background does not establish that Rambert’s shooting of Brown was unlawful, but it is directly relevant context for evaluating a fatal use of force by a department then operating under court-ordered reform.
.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://abc7chicago.com/post/chicago-shooting-police-turell-brown-copa/11032958/
https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/man-shot-killed-by-police-during-domestic-incident-in-englewood/
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/9/19/22683578/chicago-police-shooting-englewood-man-killed
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/chicago-police-shooting-englewood-man-killed/
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-involved-shooting-reported-in-englewood-officials/2616606/
https://abc7chicago.com/post/chicago-police-shooting-video-turrell-brown-bodycam/11144515/
https://www.cookcountystatesattorney.org/sites/g/files/ywwepo351/files/document/file/2024-08/Turell%20Brown%20Declination%20Memo.pdf
https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/09/21/after-cop-kills-man-in-englewood-copa-urges-witnesses-to-come-forward/