Hard choices for Chicago’s mayor over new police boss

Last April, when she still a candidate for mayor, I asked Lori Lightfoot why she would want to leave her cushy berth at a big law firm to play urban problem whack-a-mole, a game impossible to win.

What I meant was, why condemn yourself to a series of bad choices? The recently settled strike of the Chicago Teachers Union being a perfect example: She could give the teachers what they want and drive Chicago deeper into its pit of bottomless insolvency. Or hold firm and let the teachers walk, meaning 300,000 kids would start rattling around the city, each a wrong step away from blundering in front of a bus or a bullet and becoming a tiny body set at Lightfoot’s doorstep. She tried to split the difference and the teachers struck.

I spent the strike manfully suppressing the urge to write a column that began with me marching into my boss’s office and demanding my own 16% raise. I would then share with a delighted reading public the eye-rolling rejection and bum’s rush I’d certainly be given. But frankly, the man has enough worries without his employees cooking up stunts then dragooning him as an unwitting participant.

Now Police Supt. Eddie Johnson is retiring, which has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with his being found slumped behind the wheel of his car after a festive dinner. And another jump-out-the-window-or-drink-poison decision is dangled in front of our still sorta-new mayor. Promote from within the department? The Matt Rodriguez Method. Or seek someone from the outside the force. Let’s call that the O.W. Wilson Gambit.

Promote from within and you get men like Johnson, whose qualities I dare not characterize without being accused of slandering the guy as he grabs his cardboard box and hurries out the door with all the dignity he can muster. Perhaps the tactful route is to recall what Johnson said last year when asked about the Code of Silence in the Robert Rialmo trial:

”I’ve never heard an officer talk about code of silence. I don’t know of anyone being trained on a code of silence.”

The first part might even be true: It wouldn’t be much of a code of silence if police officers were always talking about it. They don’t have to. Nor is noticing anything amiss a savvy career strategy at CPD. The second part, “I don’t know of anyone being trained in a code of silence,” is the kind of transparent dodge that police officers utilize when being deceptive without actually lying under oath. As if anyone is suggesting they train officers to first and foremost watch each other’s back. “Alright class, settle down. I’m going to show you a short film, ‘Altering Incident Reports to Cover Your Partner’s Ass.’”

Lightfoot could pluck someone who has floated to the top through decades of willful obliviousness, working through the charade of the Police Board, leaving onlookers groping for polite metaphors about the sharpness of knives in drawers and the brightness of bulbs in boxes.

Or she could pick an outsider, the definitive moment, for me — all together now: “A guy from Cleveland who lives in the f-----g suburbs, has his own flippin’ skeletons and doesn’t know what he’s talking about...”

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes. Lightfoot could pick an outsider, whom the department will instantly loathe with that coiled, furious hatred unique to police officers, writhing under the very notion of accountability, forgetting that, left to their own devices, they start smothering suspects with typewriter covers.

The moment that defines the outsider route is when Jody Weis arrived, looked around, hands on hips, and announced police officers are too fat, and should become body builders, like him.

Space dwindles, and I haven’t given Lightfoot a hint of how to proceed. Which is intentional, as there is no good option. By the way, Lightfoot’s answer, when I asked her why she would want such a bad job was to laugh and say, ”I don’t know about that. I feel very enthusiastic about the possibilities.”

Enthusiasm is infectious, and I’ll try to get into the spirit of the thing. A new leader of the police to select! Endless possibilities! Countless qualified candidates! An I-see-nothing! Sgt. Schultz from within the department? Or clueless foredoomed blowhard from without?

Frying pan? Or fire? Your choice!