Police Brutality / Individual record
Fred Hampton
Twenty-one-year-old Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was shot and killed during a predawn Chicago police raid on December 4, 1969.
- Record ID
- PB-004
- Incident date
- December 4, 1969
- Date of death
- December 4, 1969
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Chicago, IL
- Category
- Police raid shooting
What happened
Fourteen officers assigned to the Cook County State's Attorney's office raided a West Monroe Street apartment used by the Black Panther Party. Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark were killed, and several other occupants were injured. Litigation and subsequent reporting documented the role of an FBI informant who supplied details of the apartment layout. Hampton's family and survivors alleged that law-enforcement agencies planned the raid to suppress Black Panther organizing.
Investigation & findings
A federal civil-rights suit pursued by the families and survivors concluded in a 1982 settlement of approximately $1.85 million shared among the plaintiffs; the government did not formally concede wrongdoing.
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- Historical source-derived record, pre-2015
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Published historical compilation of Black people killed in police custody (1999–2014)SAGE journal / cited NAACP LDF memorial listing · 2016 · Secondary scholarly source