Former Top Cop Eddie Johnson's Cop Out Has Ring of Untruth

CHICAGO — Accused sexual abuser Eddie Johnson wants Chicagoans to believe him when he says that his extra-marital encounters before he got fired as police superintendent were never forced on the female police officer assigned as his chauffeur.

The disgraced former top cop handpicked ABC 7's consumer-affairs reporter and a Sun-Times columnist for a pair of "exclusive" interviews to refute graphic details in a lawsuit that alleges for three years Johnson forced a female police officer to perform sex acts against her will in his office and while traveling on city business, among other places.

Johnson didn't ask for my help magnifying his apology tour, but I'm here to help.

And spreading the word about Eddie's sympathy play to people who might have missed it, well, that's the right thing to do, I figure.

Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell got the first sit down with Johnson to talk about what she called the "infamous night that put his marriage through the ringer and his career down the tubes."

That's certainly one way to describe the 24-hour period Johnson drove a police vehicle after a boozy night, got a free pass from officers who found him unconscious behind the wheel and lied to the public about the details, including the phony claim that he launched an investigation into himself.

Then again, maybe that's why Johnson told his story to Mitchell who ended an interview with him in 2019 by touching his knee and saying, "How are you feeling? Because you're looking great."

Mitchell didn't mention the cops under Johnson's command jammed up on misconduct charges for letting their boss drive home without giving him a sobriety test. She also didn't go into specifics about the pile of circumstantial evidence — video and a city inspector general investigation – that seems like it could warrant drunken driving and, maybe, official misconduct charges.

No, the focus of Mitchell's column remained on Johnson's assertion that the extramarital affair he had with police officer Cynthia Donald was "wholly consensual and mutually sustained." Also, that Johnson is "sorry," "human" and previously had an "unblemished" police career.

Mitchell even sympathetically opined that the interview was difficult for Johnson for "obvious reasons," and admitted she struggled while talking to Johnson because "too often, Black leaders are unfairly maligned." She suggested Johnson might find "redemption" by helping someone else avoid "similar mistakes."

Johnson must have loved that. A few days later, Johnson sat down for his first TV interview with Channel 7's Samantha Chatman, a consumer affairs reporter.

Maybe he thought he'd get the same treatment. He mostly didn't. I hope Cook County prosecutors and the lawyers representing Johnson's accuser were watching.

They probably learned a lot from Chatman's interview. I know I did.

Johnson admitted to an "inappropriate relationship" with the woman who says he sexually abused her.

He confessed to drinking before cops found him passed out behind the wheel of his police vehicle.

The former top cop said he didn't lie to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who fired him for doing just that. He told ABC7 he was just following lessons learned during a long career in a police department with a reputation for covering up misconduct.

"I knew there was an investigation, but she was also my boss, so I was trying to tell her what happened without going into a lot of detail," Johnson said exclusively to ABC7. "I know from my training, you don't go into a whole lot of detail before you talk to the investigators."

Then, Johnson cast himself as a victim, saying he's "hurt and disappointed," that a woman who he supervised would "lie" about being forced to have sex with him, her married boss.

"I think that's the million-dollar question," he told Chatman.

He couldn't be more wrong about that.

Here's a better one: Will Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx take the former top cop's media confessions and the Chicago inspector general's investigation findings and press criminal charges against Johnson for driving a cop car under the influence before the statute of limitations expires in April?

So, I called to ask.

Foxx's spokeswoman sent a note: "We don’t have any updates at this time."

Stay tuned.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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