The head of the Chicago Police Department has been fired amid widespread criticism over how authorities responded to a white police officer fatally shooting a black teenager last year.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he formally asked Garry McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, for his resignation on Tuesday morning, a week after video footage of the shooting was released and the officer was charged with murder.
“He has become an issue, rather than dealing with the issue, and a distraction,” Emanuel said. He added that while he is loyal to McCarthy, who he praised for his leadership of the department, the needs of the city are more important.
Anger has erupted in Chicago since authorities released footage of Jason Van Dyke, a city police officer, shooting Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old, last year.
Emanuel said he began talking to McCarthy on Sunday, after several days of heated protests, about “the undeniable fact that the public trust in the leadership of the department has been shaken and eroded.”
While Emanuel said he had “a lot of confidence in the work” McCarthy has done, he said the move was necessary to rebuild public trust and confidence in the police force.
City leaders and demonstrators have called for Emanuel to remove McCarthy, arguing that new leadership is needed to reassure a troubled public. Last week, a dozen members of the city council’s black caucus gathered to reiterate these calls for new leadership.
Outrage has mounted over the long lag between McDonald’s death in October 2014 and last week’s release of the video and charges against Van Dyke. In the interim, Emanuel was re-elected to a second term after an unexpected runoff.
Since the video’s release, Emanuel has said he fully supported McCarthy, a position he held publicly until word leaked shortly before the news conference that he had asked him to step down.
As recently as Tuesday morning, McCarthy was conducting interviews and responding to the calls for him to step down.
McCarthy acknowledged missteps, saying in an interview with NBC Chicago that the initial press release about the shooting, which said McDonald had continued to approach officers and disregarded orders to drop his knife, “was mistaken.”
In addition, a spokesman for the police union had said that McDonald lunged at police with a knife. Last week, that spokesman said he was relaying information told to him by other people on the scene and said he never spoke with Van Dyke.
But he said his authority in the Van Dyke case was limited as an outside agency and federal officials investigated what happened.
“The things that I have authority over are training, policy and supervision,” he said.
McCarthy also defended how the city has responded to the protests that have erupted since the shooting video was released last week, praising “incredible restraint by officers.”
However, calls for McCarthy’s ouster have continued in the days since the video was released. On Tuesday, the Chicago Sun-Times released an editorial saying McCarthy “has lost the trust and support of much of Chicago.”
In addition to announcing that McCarthy would step down, Emanuel also said he had created a task force focused on police accountability that was intended to improve independent oversight of the police and the way authorities respond to police officers who receive multiple complaints. The task force is also meant to determine if the city should change its policy of not releasing footage of police shootings.
This group’s recommendations will be presented to Emanuel and the Chicago City Council at the end of March, he said.
