CHICAGO (AP) – A Chicago City Council panel voted Tuesday to temporarily change the selection process for police superintendent so Mayor Rahm Emanuel can avoid the usual procedures and appoint a longtime member of the department as its next leader.
The council’s Committee on Public Safety recommended a change in the municipal code so that Emanuel can name Interim Superintendent Eddie Johnson the next superintendent instead of picking from a list of finalists given to him by the city’s police board. The committee also was considering whether to recommend Johnson for the job, and a vote from the full council was expected Wednesday.
The release of an explosive 2014 video of a white officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times, killing him, prompted Emanuel to fire Superintendent Garry McCarthy. But rather than pick a successor from three finalists recommended by the police board – two African American men and a woman – Emanuel opted for Johnson.
Some council members urged for Johnson to be appointed as quickly as possible because of the city’s violent crime problem.
“We don’t have time to play,” Alderman Walter Burnett Jr. said Tuesday during the debate.. “People are dying in our wards.”