Superintendent’s Retirement Reinforces Need for Reform
Superintendent Eddie Johnson accepted the mantle of leadership during one of Chicago’s most tumultuous moments in recent history. On the heels of former superintendent Gary McCarthy’s removal after the video of Laquan McDonald’s murder was made public, Johnson has directed the department during a period in which a significant number of problems have been exposed. This has been a moment in which the need for increased accountability within the Chicago Police Department and the City of Chicago has been paramount.
During Johnson’s tenure, CRS has been in the center of this moment of change through the establishment of the first consent decree in the country ever levied without the Department of Justice. And based on recommendations from the Obama administration to establish significant changes within the CPD, and in the multi-year work to implement a series of recommendations to overhaul the City’s police contracts through the Coalition for Police Contracts Accountability.
No role is more paramount to police reform than that of the highest-ranking officer in the department. And given Mayor Lightfoot’s decision to appoint former LA Police Chief Charlie Beck (who’s legacy of policing is not without interrogation) as the interim replacement, it is more than evident that the City and CPD are in need of oversight and influence to ensure the top-cop position — and even its interim — is filled by the right person with the right history.
With Johnson’s retirement this year, the City once more is faced with the task of hiring a new Superintendent. This is a critical process in which all of Chicago’s stakeholders — not just the CPD, Mayor, and City Council, but the citizens and commuters of Chicago, have a stake in ensuring that the CPD does not reproduce the climate of the critically long-recognized problems that Chicago has endured.
It is our hope that through the establishment of new measures, like the Grassroots Alliance on Police Accountability ordinance for community-based police oversight, we can ensure a process of accountability from the selection of the superintendent, to the review of their performance, and, if need be, a just process of removal, to ensure the lasting reform needed by our City.