Police Brutality / Individual record
Alfontish Cockerham
The Washington Post's Fatal Force database records Alfontish Cockerham in a fatal on-duty police shooting on 2015-06-20 in Chicago, IL. Individual circumstances and legal outcome require case-specific review.
- Record ID
- PB-197
- Incident date
- June 20, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Chicago, IL
- Agency
- Chicago Police Department
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 23
What happened
Alfontish Cockerham, 23, was shot by a Chicago police officer on June 20, 2015, in the South Shore neighborhood and died five days later, on June 25. Officers had responded to reports of a man carrying a gun. Prosecutors said an officer pursued Cockerham and fired after he allegedly pointed a firearm at the officer. Cockerham was initially hospitalized and charged with aggravated assault of an officer and unlawful weapon possession, but died before those charges could be tried. Some witnesses and relatives publicly disputed the account of the shooting. The Cook County medical examiner classified his death from multiple gunshot wounds as a homicide, which is a medical classification, not a conclusion that an officer committed a criminal offense. The records available here do not establish a later criminal conviction of the officer.
Investigation & findings
Individual legal and investigative outcome not yet reviewed.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 582
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- gun
- Flee status (source)
- foot
- Agency IDs (source)
- 265
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset