Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has asked for the resignation of the city’s police superintendent, Garry McCarthy. The decision, announced at a press conference today (Dec. 1), comes after a prosecutors last week charged a Chicago police officer with first degree murder and released a video of him firing 16 shots at a black teenager last October. The surfacing of the video sparked protests across the city.
Emanuel spoke of McCarthy’s “strong” record, saying his tenure at the department is one “he can be proud of.” But pressed to explain the reason for the change in leadership, Emanuel did not mince his words:
“Our goal … is to build the trust and confidence with the public. And at this point and at this juncture in the city, given what we are working on, he has become an issue rather than dealing with the issue.”
He said that McCarthy, who led the department for four years and previously served in police leadership roles in New York and Newark, had become a “distraction” and that “no one person trumps my commitment to the city of Chicago and its future.”
McCarthy’s relatively long tenure with one of the country’s largest and most contentious police departments was marked by a number of controversial police shootings, as well as an increase in homicides. Chicago is the worst big US city for police-involved killings, with 70 deaths from 2010 to 2014.
McCarthy was one of the faces of a big push for criminal justice reform from police chiefs across the country.
The Chicago Sun-Times, which broke the story of McCarthy’s firing, argues that McCarthy was an inevitable scapegoat. “Tuesday, he was reminded that Chicago Police superintendents are like baseball managers and football coaches. They’re hired to be fired. Failure and crises are literally built into the job. When it comes, a head needs to roll.”