Beck outlines ambitious police agenda

Interim police superintendent promises a complete review of CPD’s structure and increased funding for street outreach workers. He also wants to take a program he called “beat cops on steroids” and expand it citywide.

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Interim Police Superintendent Charlie Beck addresses the City Club of Chicago.

Interim Police Superintendent Charlie Beck addresses the City Club of Chicago on Monday.

Chicago Sun-Times/Fran Spielman

Interim Chicago Police Supt. Charlie Beck vowed Monday to do a “complete review” of CPD’s structure, increase funding for street outreach workers and take citywide a program he called “beat cops on steroids” before handing the reins to his successor.

During a luncheon address to the City Club of Chicago, Beck was also asked to weigh in on whether or not Chicago’s next superintendent should be an outsider or an insider.

“If it’s an outsider, it has to be an outsider that understands CPD. This is a very complicated organization,” Beck said.

Beck noted he had “loaned” his former chief of staff Sean Malinowski to CPD for a year in the furor following the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

Malinowski, LAPD’s former chief of detectives, has since moved to Chicago and is among those applying for the superintendent’s job.

“Sean, who’s seated right here at the table, came out to Chicago, is from Chicago, has lived in Chicago. ... To come in cold here, I think is a hugely heavy lift,” he said.

“But if it is an internal person, it has to be somebody who has access to what’s going on in the profession nationally.”

Beck is the retired Los Angeles police chief whose arrival in Chicago was hastened by Lightfoot’s decision to fire retiring Superintendent Eddie Johnson a month early. She accused him of “lying” about the circumstances surrounding an embarrassing drinking-and-driving incident in mid-October.

Although Beck has ruled himself out as a candidate for the permanent job, Lightfoot stressed in Monday’s introduction: “This is not a caretaker position. ... There’s important work that needs to be done now.”

Beck took the mayor’s handoff and ran with it.

He outlined an ambitious agenda for the next four months tailor-made to restore public trust, speed slow compliance with the consent decree and build on the crime-fighting progress that saw Chicago homicides dip below 500 in 2019.

His plans include:

• A  “complete review of the structure of CPD and the allotment of resources” in that structure.

“By the time I leave, we’ll be on track to make sure that we have the right number of cops in the right spots to do the right thing. This is gonna build … effectiveness and trust,” Beck said. “I’m not willing to go into a large amount of detail on that right now. But, the time frame is very aggressive.”

• Dramatically increase funding for “street outreach workers” who “have ties throughout the community and can address gang and gun violence in a way that no police officer can.”

“When you have a conversation with a young man ... who believes that the only solution to conflict is gunfire, that has to be had by somebody who’s walked in the shoes they are now walking in,” Beck said.

“My job is the last homicide. Your job is stopping the next homicide. This collaboration can have huge, huge benefits for, particularly, gun violence in Chicago.”

• Taking citywide a program now confined to two police districts known as “district coordination officers.” Beck calls it “beat cop on steroids.” One police officer is literally designated as “chief of police for quality-of-life type crimes and community complaints” in every beat in Chicago.

“It puts a face on CPD. It gives every person who lives in the city a phone number of an officer they can call 24/7, 365 to deal with quality-of-life issues,” Beck said.

On other issues during and after Monday’s speech, Beck openly acknowledged what Johnson was reluctant to admit. There is, in fact, a code of silence in the Chicago Police Department even though the “vast majority of police officers don’t participate in it.”

“I expect people who work for me to tell the truth. If they tell the truth, I can deal with what happened out there on the street. If you lie about it, then I’ve got to deal with you and I will deal with you very, very sternly,” he said.

Beck also condemned stop-and-frisk policing, arguing that random stops without sufficient reasonable suspicion “break down trust.” He was a young sergeant during “Operation Hammer” by then-LAPD chief Daryl Gates. Beck called it stop-and-frisk “at a rate beyond belief,” he said.

“I directly attribute the ’92 riots to that program. It wasn’t just the Rodney King trial that caused the ’92 riots. It was the breakdown in trust between the community and LAPD,” he said.

In response to another question from the audience, Beck discussed what concerns him about the decision to legalize recreational marijuana in Illinois.

“The price is far too high for an agricultural crop and that payment has to be made in cash,” he said.

“If you were to ask me what would make this change in social norms safer, I would say a way for people to pay … through debit or credit,” Beck added.

“In Los Angeles, I would guarantee every year after legalization that we would have at least two homicides in cannabis facilities due to armed robbery. ... That’s where the money is.”

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