Suspect in custody after Chicago police officer shot

Police have taken a gunman into custody after he allegedly shot a Chicago police officer in the left hand Saturday morning while opening fire on officers on the West Side, authorities said.

The wounded Austin District officer was taken in a squad car to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was reported to be in good condition.

Chicago police spokesman Tom Ahern tweeted at 2:20 p.m. that SWAT officers, who had surrounded a building where the alleged shooter was holed up, had arrested the suspect. A handgun was also recovered during the arrest.

An EMS Plan I was called for the incident, which automatically sends six ambulances to the scene, according to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.

The officer is the third Chicago cop to be shot within a week. She is also the 16th officer this year shot or shot at, which has outpaced last year at this date, police Superintendent David Brown said during a news conference at the scene.

“She’s in good spirits but a lot of pain,” Brown said.

The latest shooting occurred near Maypole and La Crosse avenues in the Austin community about 11:30 a.m., authorities said.

While on “routine patrol” investigating possible gunshots in the area, someone shot at Austin District officers working beat 1541, police said in a media notification.

While trying to find the shooter, more shots were fired at the responding police, hitting the officer in the hand.

Another officer who responded to the original shooting call experienced chest pains and was also taken to Mount Sinai, Brown said. It wasn’t immediately known if anyone was injured in the initial shooting.

After the officer was shot, someone was seen firing a gun from an elevated firstfloor window in the building in the 200 block of North La Crosse Avenue, police said.

Officers returned fire but did not hit anyone, Brown said. The gunman stayed inside a three-flat apartment building. People inside the building were evacuated and interviewed.

As of 1:45 p.m., the area remained an active police scene, and police were diverting the public away. SWAT officers were on the scene.

As of about the same time, about two blocks from the attack, a 69-year-old man standing on a porch of his home at Lamon and La Crosse avenues was concerned but not alarmed.

“That’s pretty bogus,” he said, declining to be identified. “Shooting at the police is serious.”

Another man approached him, asking: “Hear them sirens?”

“I’ve been hearing them for the past two hours,” the man on the porch replied, adding he was preparing to move to Mississippi next month.

The block where the shooting happened is plagued with illegal drug activity, the 69-year-old said, and he avoids it when walking.

“That’s a crazy block down there. I figured it was time to go out into the country . ... It’s time to get out of here.”

The shooting comes five days after an off-duty officer was shot while sitting in his vehicle at a traffic light in the 8900 block of South Stony Island Avenue in the Calumet Heights community on the South Side.

That officer was shot in the abdomen and needed surgery. A $1,000 reward has been offered for the capture of at least two suspects wanted in that case.

The day before that shooting, on March 14, an on-duty sergeant was shot outside the Gresham District Police Station, 7808 S. Halsted St., on the South Side. That sergeant suffered a graze wound to his chin, and there’s been no word of any arrests in that case.