Mayor on Chicago's Top Cop: 'I'm Standing By Him'

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, responding to a call for a new top cop from members of the City Council’s Black Caucus, said he won’t fire Chicago’s police superintendent.

“I’m standing by him,” Emanuel told reporters Tuesday morning following a ceremony honoring police, firefighters and paramedics in City Council chambers.

Also Tuesday, during a budget hearing focused on the police department, South Side Ald. Anthony Beale laid into Supt. Garry McCarthy, reports the Chicago Tribune.

“Superintendent, you’ve been extremely disrespectful to every member in this body. You haven’t returned phone calls, and you haven’t listened to what we have to say to change the quality of life in our communities,” Beale declared. “That’s why the Black Caucus stood up yesterday and asked for your resignation and for your firing. That’s why. So if the mayor chooses to keep you around or if you decide to stay around, I’m hoping you are hearing the cries of this body, because the cries that you hear from this body are the same cries that we hear every single day in our communities. We all want the same goal, but you are not the smartest person in the room all the time.”

At a press conference Monday afternoon, 15 black aldermen called for McCarthy to be fired over the rising gun violence in the city and its effect on predominately African-American neighborhoods.

“Supt. McCarthy’s leadership has failed our communities, and it is time for a substantial change. It is clear that the current approach has been ineffective,” Ald. Roderick Sawyer, the 6th Ward alderman who chairs the Black Caucus, said. “Five years has been long enough.”

McCarthy did not respond to the criticism, but the mayor did.

“I understand their frustration,” Emanuel said. “My focus — and I want everyone’s focus — is on gangs and guns, not on Garry.”

In a column posted on SunTimes.com, Mark Brown suggested the outrage of the Black Caucus may have less to do with gun violence and more to do with McCarthy’s unwillingness to let the aldermen influence his command appointments.

Writes Brown:

Surprisingly, to me at least, the aldermen calling for McCarthy’s ouster had relatively little to say about violence, complaining more about him being unresponsive not just to their concerns but to their telephone calls.

Let’s be clear that sometimes when aldermen complain about a police superintendent being unresponsive that’s code for them not being able to influence assignments and promotions in the department, a privilege they have sometimes enjoyed in the past with disastrous results. That should never be allowed.