Garry McCarthy – who was the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department from 2011 to 2015 – joins the podcast to explain why he vehemently disagrees with a new Justice Department report that is highly critical of Chicago’s policing practices.
McCarthy also shares his views on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) and explains why the murder rate is so much lower in New York than Chicago.
Excerpts:
1:43 -- 2:30
McCarthy questions credibility of the DOJ report and says the federal government did not interview him:
MCCARTHY: “They day they showed up, I knew what the report was going to say because it’s the same things it said in the other 24 cities that they’ve gone to. They have, they have a format, I think it’s really just fill in the blanks. The credibility of this report in my mind is seriously in question. I think it’s completely politically motivated.
“I don’t know if you saw today, but Loretta Lynch was asked, you know, how come you didn’t interview Garry McCarthy? She said that they tried but I wasn’t unavailable.
“So let me get this straight. With all the investigative resources of the federal government, you couldn’t find me here in River North, which is a neighborhood in Chicago. It’s the most absurd thing.”
2:58 – 3:39
On the city of Chicago’s conflict of interest in the DOJ investigation of the Chicago Police
MCCARTHY: “The actual cooperation from the city was done through somebody named Steve Patton, who is the corporation counsel for the city of Chicago. The actual attempted cover up of the Laquan McDonald video was completely orchestrated by Steve Patton. He paid the family five million dollars and that was without filing a lawsuit, and the caveat was, the video does not get released. Now mind you, Steve Patton helped write the report with the Justice Department, so if that’s not a conflict of interest, I don’t know what is.”
4:42 – 5:54
On being “thrown under the bus” and fired after the release of the Laquan McDonald police shooting tape
MCCARTHY: “There’s no doubt and there’s not a person in Chicago or anybody who I personally know across the country who thinks that I was fired for any other reason than to try and mitigate blame from the mayor. There’s nobody who thinks that. For anybody to make any sort of accusation or allegation, I took every step that I could take take under the law in the case of Laquan McDonald. I could only strip the officer of his police powers and put him on desk duty, on paid desk duty. The investigation is not handled by the Chicago Police Department, it’s handled by something called the Independent Police Review Authority. So we have outside investigations of police uses of force. In this case we have a federal investigation …. And then when you don’t like the results you have to blame somebody and that’s the theory on why I got thrown under the bus as people like to say.”
6:02 – 6:27
On why he was fired by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D)
ROBERT SAMUEL (HOST): Have you had any conversations with the mayor about officially why you were removed?
MCCARTHY: Not one. Not one. Not one word since that day. As a matter of fact, somebody recently asked me, I believe it was “60 Minutes,” which it didn’t air, but they asked me, why was I fired? And I said, you know what, you’d have to ask Rahm Emanuel because I was never given a reason.
6:49 -- 7:33
On Chicago’s lack of crime strategy
MCCARTHY: What you see here in Chicago is a political and a communications strategy. You don’t see a crime strategy. And the political strategy has it that you go into work with DOJ and sign off on whatever they need and talk about police reform even when it was your attorney, the corporation counsel, who actually took the actions to cause the controversy.
That’s the political strategy. And then the communications strategy is avoid, avoid, avoid. And ‘look at the squirrel,’ which is what they’ve been getting away with for a long time. Any time there is something negative that pops in the press, there’s a leak about something else. Don’t look at this, look at that. And unfortunately it’s been working.
11:42 – 12:15
On why he would fire Chicago Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton
MCCARTHY: If I were in charge of the city of Chicago, the first thing I would do is fire the corporation counsel of the city of Chicago. He’s already come up three times in this conversation as far as problems. He gives away money. He’s referred to as an ATM by personal injury attorneys in this city. He’s the one who hijacked the whole attempt to revamp the disciplinary system in the police department. And he’s the one who made the deal to hide the tape. The video of the Laquan McDonald shooting.
14:53 – 15:15
The difference between policing in Chicago versus New York
MCCARTHY: The difference between New York and Chicago is the fact that New York is a performance-based organization, Chicago is all politics. It’s not about how good you are. It’s about who you’re hooked up with, who you know, what you look like, what your orientation is, whatever the case might be. And as long as we don’t have a performance-based organization, you’re not going to get performance.
17:39 – 18:27
Criticism of Department of Justice racial accusations
MCCARTHY: The Department of Justice comes to Chicago and says you’re disproportionately stopping African-Americans. And you should be stopping them based on the population demographics, which is preposterous. If we went to the Supreme Court and said that, they would say that it was unconstitutional, if you ask me. Of course, that’s not what they said in 1968. And just to make it really clear what that means, just to give you how absurd that notion is – Englewood is the most violent community in the city of Chicago. It also happens to be 97% African-American. In that community, we’re expected to stop 32% white folks. They don’t exist. So if you respond to crime data, you’re considered racist. If you don’t respond to it, people die. What are the police supposed to do?
23:29 – 23:59
On Chicago’s weak gun laws
MCCARTHY: I’ve become an advocate for not incarcerating people for low-level narcotics offenses because we have to put the right people in jail. And the laws here in Chicago by the way, I keep hearing it over-and-over and unfortunately I hear it on O’Reilly also, Chicago does not have the toughest gun laws in the country, no way shape or form. You do not go to jail for an illegal possession of a loaded firearm. It’s not even considered a violent crime for sentencing purposes.
25:03 – 25:18
MCCARTHY: Look at Plaxico Burress in New York. That’s another difference between New York and Chicago. Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg and went to jail for two-and-a-half years. In my time here in Chicago, I’ve never seen anybody with a self-inflicted gun-shot wound go to jail.
25:33 -- 25:43
On his opposition to sending the National Guard to Chicago
MCCARTHY: A properly directed police department should be trained, should be setup to reduce crime. The National Guard is not setup to reduce crime.
