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Chicago’s interim top cop calls Laquan McDonald scandal a ‘tipping point’ for reform

In remarks Monday to civic leaders, interim Chicago police Superintendent Charlie Beck called the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald a “tipping point” that must lead the department toward reform and reestablishing trust in minority neighborhoods.

Beck, the former longtime Los Angeles police chief and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s surprise pick to temporarily lead the department, drew comparisons in his speech to the City Club of Chicago between the reform paths that police in LA and Chicago were forced to undertake in the wake of major scandals.

Beck not only singled out the slaying of 17-year-old McDonald but also what he called the “horrific actions” of disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge, whose abuse and torture of dozens of African American suspects in the 1970s and ’80s has stained the city’s reputation and cost tens of millions of dollars in litigation.

“Each of these journeys is defined by the tipping point event that caused major change,” Beck said in reference to the two Chicago scandals as well as the 1991 LAPD beating of motorist Rodney King and a scandal in the late 1990s that uncovered dozens of officers had physically abused suspects and tampered with evidence. “They both resulted in the same thing. They resulted in a huge loss of trust and confidence by the community in their police departments. … And I think even more dramatically, there’s a human cost. Both agencies, both cities suffered their most violent years following these tipping point events.”

Beck said Chicago police must now commit to reform in order to restore that trust by implementing a federal consent decree intended to fundamentally alter the way officers treat residents.

While heading LAPD, Beck oversaw similar reforms for a department that struggled for about a dozen years to implement the required changes.

While Chicago is better poised than Los Angeles to implement the widespread reforms, Beck said, the Police Department is still struggling to establish a clear reform mission.

“I see CPD walking the exact same path as LA did,” he said. “There is disbelief. There is misunderstanding. There is failure to focus. But we’re changing all that. … The pieces are here. We have a committed mayor, a committed CPD team..”

Among the first moves made by Beck since taking over as interim superintendent in early December was to fill some 35 positions on the department’s reform team that had gone vacant.

Beck had planned to succeed Superintendent Eddie Johnson on his retirement effective Jan. 1, but that all changed on 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 at a stop sign. Beck flew in from LA that afternoon to run the department until Lightfoot announces a permanent successor to Johnson.

The deadline to seek the superintendent’s post passed on Monday with 23 applicants filing, according to the Police Board, which will recommend three finalists to Lightfoot.

The shooting of McDonald has proved to be a seismic shift for Chicago and its Police Department. The white officer shot McDonald 16 times as the black teen, high on PCP, refused police commands to drop a knife while walking away from officers on a Southwest Side street in October 2014.

Graphic police dashboard camera video of the shooting — ordered released by a judge more than a year later — sparked weeks of chaos and political upheaval, exacerbating the already fraught relationship between Chicago police and minority communities. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation found the department had engaged in widespread civil rights violations for decades, ultimately leading to the federal consent decree laying out a series of mandated reforms.

In a historic trial in 2018, a Cook County jury convicted white Officer Jason Van Dyke of second-degree murder for shooting the black teen 16 times, making him the first Chicago cop in half a century to be convicted of an on-duty killing.

Beck told the couple of hundred business and civic leaders at the downtown luncheon meeting that CPD was “much better positioned for success” than LAPD to enact the consent decree reforms.

He touted Chicago’s nerve centers, located in most of the department’s patrol districts that use real-time crime data to help commanders determine where to deploy officers, a vast network of surveillance cameras and gunshot detection technology that allows cops to respond more quickly to shootings.

“That is beyond what any other major city police department has,” he said.

Beck also credited major citywide anti-violence programming that offered jobs, gang conflict mediation and victim support — programming he said the city plans to boost with funding.

“People see that you put as much value in constitutional policing as you do in solving crimes, they understand, and that builds trust,” he said.

Beck said he would also expand a pilot program in which some beat officers are freed from responding to 911 calls to personally interact with residents and businesses in order to tackle quality-of-life issues such as troubled buildings, loitering and other nuisance offenses. The work can improve police relations with the community — and lead to more help from residents in the fight against crime, he said.

Beck also touched on his swift decision to suspend the department’s controversial merit promotion system, long criticized by officers for allowing too many less-deserving cops to win promotions because of who they know rather than what they know.

Beck also revealed to the audience he has a long-ago connection to Chicago — his great-grandfather, who grew up on Chicago’s West Side. His grandfather was also born in the city before relocating to the West Coast, but Beck said he told him stories about living in Chicago.

“For me, this is a little bit of a coming home,” he said. “… I want to make sure that this city has the best police department it can possibly have in the short time that I’m here. But I also want to make sure that my great-grandfather knows I did the best I could do to make his hometown, and now my adopted hometown, the safest big city in America.”

jgorner@chicagotribune.com

asweeney@chicagotribune.com