As quickly as he was thrust into the spotlight, he was gone.
Eddie Johnson was ousted as superintendent of the Chicago Police Department Monday morning, more than 3 ½ years after he was tapped to lead it — but a month before his scheduled retirement.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters she canned Johnson, a 31-year CPD veteran, after learning he lied to her about an October incident in which he was found slumped over in his car near his Bridgeport home.
“Had I known these facts at the time, I would have relieved him of his duties as superintendent then and there,” Lightfoot said. “I certainly would not have participated in a celebratory press conference to announce his retirement.”
Johnson’s time helming the CPD, the second largest police department in the country, was marked by a host of changes driven almost entirely by the 2015 release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video.
In fact, it was the video’s release that propelled Johnson to the top of the CPD.
Shortly after the video was made public, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired then-CPD Supt. Garry McCarthy. Lightfoot, then president of the Chicago Police Board, gave Emanuel three finalists for the job, but he rejected all of them.
Emanuel opted to offer the job to Johnson, who didn’t apply for the position, in an effort to quell simmering tensions between the CPD and the city’s communities of color.
However, Johnson was among the group of department leadership who saw the McDonald shooting video — and he raised no objections, according to an OIG report made public in October.
In 2017, Lightfoot said Johnson “walked into probably one of the worst circumstances any superintendent has walked into, maybe in the history of the department.”
In the first year of Johnson’s leadership, 2016, the number of murders reached 784, a level not seen since the mid-1990s, though they’ve since dropped precipitously, to 578 last year. The CPD was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, which ultimately led to a federal consent decree, entered earlier this year, that will ensure departmental reforms. Before the decree was entered, the department made changes to its use-of-force policy to focus more on de-escalation and preserving the “sanctity of life.”
Johnson, who grew up in the Cabrini-Green housing project on the Near North Side, joined the department in 1988 and was eventually promoted to commander of the Gresham District on the South Side. Johnson’s elder son, Daniel, is a CPD officer in the same district.
Under Johnson’s leadership, the CPD invested heavily in tech-based crimefighting strategies, including equipping every patrol officer with a body-worn camera.
The use of ShotSpotter — sensors that pick up the sound of gunfire so police can respond even if no one calls 911 — has greatly expanded in recent years.
The CPD has also worked with the University of Chicago Crime Lab to implement Strategic Decision Support Centers in districts across the city, allowing police and data analysts to monitor and respond to criminal activity and trends in real time. The centers have been credited with helping drive down shootings in some of the most historically violent parts of the city.
But while progress has been made during Johnson’s tenure as superintendent, Chicago’s scourge of shootings has persisted.
Through late November, the CPD had recorded 452 murders in 2019, compared to the 517 seen during the same time period in 2018, according to CPD statistics.
Johnson’s health has also become a focal point on several occasions. In January 2017, he fell ill while at a news conference with Emanuel in Englewood. Later that day, he disclosed he had been diagnosed with glomerulonephritis, a kidney condition, when he was 25 years old.
Johnson later underwent a successful kidney transplant; his son Daniel was the donor. Earlier this year, he was hospitalized with a blood clot.
Contributing: Fran Spielman