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| Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel fires his top cop out the cannon. |
Looks like it's curtains for the police commissioner Gerry McCarthy. The Chicago police's top cop was fired out the cannon for inept management.
Chicago has experienced a rise in gun violence, gang violence and possible police corruption within the department.
All the recipes for embattled mayor Rahm Emmanuel to light the cannon and send McCarthy right out of the tent.
The Laquan McDonald shooting proved to be the boiling point for residents fed up with police corruption, the constant gun violence and gang violence plaguing the third largest city in the U.S.
McCarthy was hired by Emanuel to take over the Chicago Police Department shortly after Emanuel's election in early 2011. McCarthy was the City of Chicago's highest paid public employee, earning an annual salary of over $260,000.
The number of crimes and murders in Chicago declined under his tenure (with murders declining from 525 in 2011 to 505 in 2012 to 415 in 2013).
In an investigative article by Chicago Magazine reporters David Bernstein and Noah Isackson, it was asserted that the decline was in part due to the unjustified re-categorization of murders as undetermined and then if it is later determined to be a murder, tallying the total to the prior years' statistics.
McCarthy responded that the article is “patently false” and criticized its reliance on anonymous sources.
A 2012 audit by the Chicago Inspector General determined that the Chicago Police Department had under-counted aggravated assault and aggravated battery victims by 25 percent by not following state guidelines by counting each incident rather than each victim.
McCarthy attributed the error to the administration of the prior police superintendent, Jody Weis.
Anita Alverez is facing some major heat as well. After the release of the video of now disgraced cop Jason Van Dyke putting 16 rounds in the fleeing Laquan, people are saying it's political corruption.
Alverez denies that she held back the video to help Emmanuel's chances at winning the election.
Calls for her removal from the Cook County prosecutor are growing as well.
Even Jesse Jackson is turning his back on the Chicago mayor. He is calling for Emmanuel to resign.
The shooting happened in October 2014. That was about the time Rahm Emmanuel was facing a tough reelection bid. Emmanuel was reelected in April 2015. The video release happened 13 months since the shooting and seven months into his second term.
The federal and state courts ruled that the video must be shown and it was being held back in fear of political backlash. The family of Laquan was paid off earlier this year. The family was awarded $6.4 million in damages.
