Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel rejects board recommendations for new police chief

Rahm Emanuel, the Mayor of Chicago, is set to reject all three recommended finalists for a new police chief for the city amidst sinking morale among officers on the beat and surging crime rates and choose a veteran insider instead.

By spurning all three candidates for the top job presented to him by his own police board, Mr Emanuel was tacitly acknowledging the depth of the crisis that has gripped the police department since the eruption last November of the controversy surrounding the police shooting in late 2014 of teenage African-American, Laquan McDonald.

His own image severely battered by the episode, Mr Emanuel opted instead to promote an insider. He is Eddie Johnson, a 27-year veteran of the Chicago force and an African-American who is popular among other officers. He would serve as Police Superintendent on an interim basis, pending further action by the police board to confirm him.

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“Eddie Johnson is the right person at the right time to fight crime, lift morale in the Police Department and build on the work that’s been done to restore trust and accountability in the Police Department,” a statement issued by the Mayor’s office said.

A storm broke around Mr Emanuel, a one-time Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama, last November when it emerged that the city had suppressed a video showing the killing of Mr McDonald by a white police officers who shot him on the street 16 times. The officer has been charged with murder. The case spawned allegations of a cover-up, weeks of street protests and calls for Mr Emanuel to resign.

As part of his response to the furore, Mr Emanuel forced the resignation of the then Superintendent, creating the vacancy that he is now struggling to fill. The 17-strong black caucus in the City Council has exerted intense pressure on him to appoint an African-American to the job arguing that it would offer the only course to repairing trust between the black community and the police department.

In the meantime there are signs of collapsing morale among the 12,000-strong Chicago police force as officers continue to face fury from the black community and homicide rates have seen a new spike. A survey by the Chicago Tribune found, for instance, that police in the city made 6,818 arrests in January, a drop of more than 3,000 compared with the same month last year.

“My goal is to find a superintendent and a team that gives them the confidence to do the job they've done,” Mr Emanuel told the Tribune in an interview. “They can do this. I want their morale up, and I want the gangbangers to know they're back, they are doing their job and they're ready to do their job. Their morale has to be boosted, as much as the gangbangers have to know the cops are on the beat.”

Among those presented by the police board to Mayor Emanuel as an appropriate pick was Cedric Alexander, a top officer in the Atlanta area and a well known voice on black policing matters on CNN and elsewhere. He claimed at the weekend that Mr Emanuel had offered him the position and then changed his mind. “I've moved on, brother. Thanks, kindly,” he told an Atlanta TV station. The Mayor’s office denied he had ever been offered the position, however.