Fewer than half of the people vying to become Chicago’s next top cop currently work for its Police Department or once spent much of their law enforcement career there, a city official said Thursday night.
Chicago Police Board President Ghian Foreman disclosed the demographic breakdown of the 25 people who applied for the job, a pool that included mostly white and African American candidates and an overwhelming number of men.
Eleven of the 25 applicants either currently work for the Chicago Police Department or “spent a significant amount of their career” there, Foreman said at the board’s monthly meeting at police headquarters. The other 14 applicants work outside of Chicago.
In a statement earlier this week, Foreman indicated the board received applications from around the country to lead the nation’s second largest police force.
During the Thursday night meeting, Foreman said 21 of the applicants were men and four were women. He also said 13 applicants were white, 11 were African American and one was Latino.
The names of the applicants were not disclosed. But Foreman and the eight other board members were now tasked with reviewing the applications, interviewing the candidates and presenting Mayor Lori Lightfoot with three finalists for her consideration.
The names of finalists will be released publicly before Lightfoot chooses one of them as her next superintendent within a few months.
In 2016, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel bypassed the Police Board’s three finalists and had the City Council pass a special ordinance to allow him to hire Eddie Johnson as his superintendent, though he didn’t apply for the job. Lightfoot, who was Police Board president at that time, has pledged to make her selection based on the board’s finalists.
Earlier this week, the board said 23 candidates applied for the job this time around. But on Thursday night, Foreman said the board accepted two more applications it received in the mail after the 5 p.m. Monday deadline. The two applications were originally scheduled for delivery before the deadline, he said.
In December 2015, 39 candidates applied to be superintendent when the job was last open. That was after then-police Superintendent Garry McCarthy’s firing as part of the fallout of the Laquan McDonald shooting scandal.
This time, the board opened the application process Nov. 21 after Johnson announced plans to retire by the end of the year. Lightfoot announced his temporary successor would be former Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck.
But that all changed Dec. 2 when Lightfoot abruptly fired Johnson, saying he had intentionally misled her about his conduct after a late weeknight out in October when he was found asleep in his running vehicle near his South Side home. Beck flew in from LA that afternoon to run the department until Lightfoot announces a permanent successor to Johnson.
![When it comes to writing a demand note, bank robbers tend to follow a certain unspoken etiquette of brevity and clarity. But that’s not what happened in downtown Chicago earlier this week, when federal prosecutors say a man walked into the Chase Bank building at 10 S. Dearborn St. and handed a note to a teller that may have set records for length and variety of literary themes. “Give me as much money possible!!” read the note on lined paper in a neat, looping script that used bubbles to dot the “I’s.” “No more then $2000.” It was a simple […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ctc-l-kendall-jones-bank-robbery-01_187917143.jpg?w=455 "When it comes to writing a demand note, bank robbers tend to follow a certain unspoken etiquette of brevity and clarity. But that’s not what happened in downtown Chicago earlier this week, when federal prosecutors say a man walked into the Chase Bank building at 10 S. Dearborn St. and handed a note to a teller that may have set records for length and variety of literary themes. “Give me as much money possible!!” read the note on lined paper in a neat, looping script that used bubbles to dot the “I’s.” “No more then $2000.” It was a simple […]")
