Uh-Oh: Chicago's Top Cop Receives '100 Percent Support' From Mayor
By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 26, 2013 3:08PM
Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy his “100 percent support” Monday despite an inability to make a dent in Chicago’s homicide rate and rising calls from black aldermen to replace McCarthy. Yet Emanuel also expressed “impatience” with curbing the murder rate.
We aren’t saying McCarthy should start polishing his resume yet. But the last member of Emanuel’s cabinet that received his “100 percent support” was former Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, who received a severance package for the ages when he resigned shortly after last year’s teachers’ strike.
Emanuel’s public support of McCarthy came after Ald. Howard Brookins, chairman of the City Council Black Caucus, intimated “the clock is ticking” on McCarthy’s tenure as Superintendent.
“We’re getting push-back from our constituents. They’re wondering what the hell their elected representatives are doing to combat all this violence. We’re not gonna wear the jacket for the actions or inactions of” the superintendent.--snip—
“If there were 42 murders in January when it’s cold outside, what happens in June or July when the weather is warmer and there are more people on the street?” the alderman said.
Brookins and other African American aldermen have criticized McCarthy’s strategies to combat gang violence and the Police Department’s response to the homicide rate. McCarthy has taken to the media numerous times to stress his strategies are actually reducing overall violent crime whenever the homicide rate makes national headlines, as it most recently did with the murder of Hadiya Pendleton last month.
Emanuel, speaking at a news conference Monday to announce all-day kindergarten in Chicago Public Schools, said he feels the aldermen’s pain.
"First and foremost, I support any of the aldermen's expressions of frustration. That is no different from my sense of urgency," Emanuel said at a news conference at Cuffe Academy in Auburn Gresham. "Garry McCarthy, Al Wysinger and the entire leadership of the Police Department have my 100 percent support. But they also have my sense of impatience to get the results throughout the city."
Brookins later said he’s “learned to believe what the mayor says” and was working with the mayor and Police Department to find ways to curb the violence.
"In hearing the mayor's outrage with respect to this and his impatience with respect to the crime rate, he captures our frustration and the sentiment of the African-American Caucus."