Chicago Police Supt. David Brown resigns

Embattled Chicago Police Supt. David Brown resigned Wednesday — one day after the defeat of his biggest backer, Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

“I will be stepping down as Chicago Police superintendent effective March 16 so the incoming mayor can begin the process as soon as possible to hire the next superintendent,” Brown wrote in a statement. He did not mention the interim civilian oversight commission charged with conducting the nationwide search.

Both candidates in the April 4 runoff election, Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, like all of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s challengers, had vowed to fire Brown as their first order of business.

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“It has been an honor and a privilege to work alongside the brave men and women of the Chicago Police Department,” Brown said.

Lightfoot issued a statement commending Brown “for his accomplishments, not just for the department, but the entire city.”

Her statement continued: “First Deputy Eric Carter will be appointed as interim superintendent until the new Mayor is sworn into office. We ask the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to immediately begin the search for a new Superintendent so that the new Mayor will be able to make a selection as soon as possible.”

The outgoing mayor ticked off a laundry list of accomplishments by the retired Dallas police chief she lured to Chicago in 2020.

They include: a “record number of illegal gun recoveries” for two straight years; programs to improve officer wellness and confront a spike in police suicides; and “consistent progress” toward compliance with a federal consent decree.

But in August, Brown faced resounding backlash when he fired Robert Boik, the civilian official leading those court-ordered reforms. Boik was dismissed after sending an email criticizing Brown’s decision to move 46 officers under Boik’s supervision to the Bureau of Patrol as part of a larger reorganization.

In a progress report last December, the monitoring team overseeing the department’s progress decried the “consistent turnover” among employees managing reforms. Those concerns were “exacerbated” by Boik’s ouster, according to the report.

Lightfoot also mentioned the hiring of a full-time recruiting team to stop the mass exodus of officers and promoting more women to the senior exempt ranks.

But Brown’s tenure has also been marked by persistent staffing shortages and officers routinely having time off canceled, a practice that has contributed to low morale.

Brown has also faced frequent turnover in his command staff and criticism from his own top brass. In January 2022, four police supervisors agreed he wasn’t fit to serve as the city’s top cop.

In his message, Brown said he’s taken a job as chief operating officer of Loncar Lyon Jenkins, a personal injury firm with seven offices in his native state of Texas.

Vallas welcomed Brown’s resignation, calling his three-year tenure an “absolute failure.”

Brown “stripped police officers away from local districts. ... He really abandoned community policing,” Vallas told the Sun-Times.

Vallas accused Brown of having “abused the rank-and-file with a punishing work schedule that, in combination with his promotion of many individuals with questionable qualifications in positions of leadership, really drove police officers to retire or transfer to other districts en masse.”

Johnson issued a statement saying Chicago’s next superintendent “must be as fully committed to the health and safety of all Chicagoans as I am, and to immediately meeting all requirements of the federal consent decree while addressing the root causes of crime.”

While he would prefer a new superintendent from within CPD, Johnson said, “most important is appointing the right person for the job — someone who is collaborative, competent and compassionate, and who truly cares about protecting and serving the people of our city.”

Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), the former CPD officer now chairing the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, said Brown gave it his all, but as an outsider, he was pretty much doomed from the start.

“As a police officer, it was hard to accept an outsider who didn’t come from the ranks. Go back to my time. Superintendent Jody Weis and Garry McCarthy. Both of them had a difficult time. This is a tough town. They knew how to run a department — but not the Chicago Police Department.”

Brown, Taliaferro said, “succeeded in some areas and failed in others — like his job of trying to get the morale better.”

Through it all, Lightfoot remained Brown’s only public champion. Now that Lightfoot is a lame duck, leaving office in May, having Brown stick around for the bitter end made no sense.

The Sun-Times reported recently that Brown had already instructed his top brass to prepare a list of his major accomplishments.

Brown’s announcement comes less than a month after news that Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan was leaving CPD to work for the tech giant Google. Insiders had pegged Deenihan as a potential replacement for Brown.

An internal memo circulated last week laid out a handful of changes to the command staff — most notably, Deputy Chief Antoinette Ursitti will replace Deenihan in an interim capacity.