The U.S. Justice Department has found that the Chicago Police Department violated constitutional rights by engaging in a “pattern or practice of use of excessive force,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Friday. Phil Rogers reports.
As the U.S. Justice Department unleashed its long-awaited findings detailing constitutional rights violations by the Chicago Police Department, one person was notably missing from the report – former police Supt. Garry McCarthy.
“Attempts were made to reach former Supt. McCarthy but he was not available,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters during the announcement.
McCarthy, who was serving as Chicago’s police superintendent during the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald and was fired soon after dashcam video of the incident was released, argued that was a lie.
“With all the investigative resources of the federal government, they can’t find me here in River North?” McCarthy told NBC 5.
McCarthy had earlier told the Big John and Ray show he was considering legal action, depending on what the DOJ report claimed. He noted his “reputation is kind of important” and said the work he did in the police department has “been destroyed.”
Since his firing, McCarthy has been outspoken about Chicago’s spiking violence and police department. In an interview earlier this month, he blamed “noncompliance” with police for a majority of police-involved shootings, saying “almost without exception any one of these bad incidents that you see, it starts with non compliance.”
“Less than half of 1 percent of all the shootings in this city involve police officers shooting civilians,” McCarthy said in the interview. “But one shooting, and granted it’s a bad shooting and the officer needs to be held accountable, whether it’s outside of policy or whether it’s criminal and he deserves a trial, just like any other citizen in this country, and the officer has to answer for his actions, but the solutions that are being applied as a result of that particular incident, have it that people are dying in record numbers here. Does that make any sense?”
Local
The highly anticipated DOJ report, released just one week before President Barack Obama's presidency comes to an end, revealed landmark findings about the Chicago Police Department aimed at eliciting change as the city battles a cloud of distrust as well as spiking violence.
The report describes a police force whose “unreasonable" use of excessive and deadly force allegedly reflects poor training and oversight, putting citizens and its own officers in danger. Standing beside Chicago’s mayor and police superintendent, Lynch said the Justice Department and city are negotiating over a court-enforced suite of changes called a consent decree.
