CPD Supt. Johnson says he is contemplating retirement

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Monday he is giving serious consideration to retiring from his $260,044-a-year job, citing the toll the job he never sought has taken on his health and his family.

“I love this job. I love this city. I have given 31 years now to this city and almost four as superintendent. But, I recognize also that, at some point, it’s time to create a different chapter in your life,” Johnson told reporters during a break at his third — and probably final — City Council budget hearing.

“Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel probably said it best when he said, `These are jobs of a lifetime. But, they’re not jobs for a lifetime.’”

Johnson said his decision to at least contemplate retirement has nothing to do with Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s ongoing investigation of him.

“When my family and I went to London for the Bears game, that’s the first vacation like that that I’ve had since I became superintendent. And I looked at my family. It made me realize how much of a sacrifice you make for your family when you take on positions like this,” the superintendent said.

“I’ve been toying with [retirement] for some time. But, that London trip really made me realize — especially for them — how much I’ve given to the city and how much I’ve taken away from them.”

Ferguson is investigating an embarrassing incident that occurred last month when Johnson was found slumped over in his police SUV at around 12:30 a.m. near the 3400 block of South Aberdeen — after dismissing his driver and attempting to drive himself home.

Johnson initially blamed a change in his blood pressure medication and his failure to fill the replacement prescription.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot subsequently disclosed to the Sun-Times that the superintendent told her he had a “couple of drinks with dinner.”

Ferguson is investigating the circumstances surrounding that incident, including whether Johnson should have been driving, why he was not given a sobriety test and whether the rules were bent to protect the boss.

Freedom of Information requests for bodycam video of the incident have been denied pending the outcome of Ferguson’s investigation.

Johnson was asked whether he plans to make up his mind about retirement before the IG issues his report.

“I’m not concerned about that. Really, I’m not,” the superintendent said.

Nor is he concerned about hanging on to the job until April, when he will be fully vested in his superintendent’s pension.

“The vested part of a pension really has never mattered to me because, remember, I didn’t apply for this job. So that part of it doesn’t matter to me. It really doesn’t,” he said.

“What matters to me is seeing CPD trusted by the communities that we serve and to see this crime go down—and we’ve done that. I’m extremely proud of the progress we’ve made. The officers and communities have come together now. I just cannot be more encouraged by what I’ve seen.”

Nearly four years ago, an end-run around the Police Board’s nationwide search for a replacement for fired Police Supt. Garry McCarthy allowed Emanuel to pluck Johnson out of obscurity, even though Johnson didn’t seek the job. Johnson at the time was the department’s chief of patrol.

Emanuel pulled it off by rejecting all three finalists chosen by the Police Board after a first nationwide search and by persuading the City Council to cancel the charade of a second nationwide search required by law.

At the time, the Police Board president was Lightfoot.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot; Lightfoot is the mayor who may choose a new superintendent.

The mayor was reluctant to change police superintendents heading into summer, when gang violence traditionally surges. But she has promised to evaluate the superintendent’s overall performance on a host of issues — once summer was over.

That conversation has not yet taken place.

Asked last month whether the drinking and driving incident would play a role in whether she’ll keep Johnson on, Lightfoot told the Sun-Times: “I don’t want to speculate like that. I want to give him respect. We will see what the circumstances are. … We’ll see where the facts take us.”

The mayor noted then that Johnson is probably one of 10 or fewer people in the entire nation who is capable of leading the nation’s second-largest police department. It’s not a decision to take lightly.

“He came in ... and really stabilized things when a lot of people felt like the department was unmoored. We have to give him credit for stepping into the breach when the department was under siege. I will take that, of course, into consideration,” she said then.

On Monday, Johnson referred to those tumultuous early days.

“I love this city. And I love this police department. And I’m so proud of where we’ve come from. When I took over in 2016, everything was a mess. The crime was a mess. The police morale was a mess. The community didn’t trust the police at all. We had activists trying to chain themselves to the door of police headquarters,” he said.

“Now, those same people are partnering with us to make this city better. Are we where we want to be? No. We’re not. But I think we’ve made significant progress and we need to continue that momentum and get this city in a place where we can get out there and say Chicago’s one of the safest big cities in this country.”

Johnson’s decision to consider calling it quits is not surprising, considering what he has endured over the last month alone.

It started with the long-awaited release of an IG report identifying Johnson as among police brass who saw the Laquan McDonald shooting video before it was publicly released and believed the shooting was justified.

Several influential black aldermen responded by saying the African-American community would have trouble trusting Johnson because of his decision to remain silent.

The report put the superintendent on the defensive.

Flanked by key members of the City Council’s Black Caucus, Johnson said that he did not see the video until two weeks after the fatal incident and that as a deputy chief of patrol at the time, he was not involved in any decisions about disciplinary action following uses of force.

He also said he did not receive investigative updates from the Independent Police Review Authority or internal affairs on officer-involved incidents at the time, explaining that his input was limited to recommendations on officer training or equipment issues.

“It would have been improper for deputy chiefs to comment on areas outside of that as they are not privy to the full scope of available information,” Johnson said. “To be clear, I never thought and I never said that the shooting of Laquan McDonald was justified.”

That was followed by a no-confidence vote in Johnson taken by the Fraternal Order of Police. It stemmed from Johnson’s decision to boycott President Donald Trump’s speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police meeting in Chicago.

When Trump arrived in Chicago, he used his speech as a forum to ridicule and vilify Johnson as a weak leader incapable of reducing crime in a city that is, Trump claimed without evidence, more violent than Afghanistan.