Cops Say McCarthy Needs to ShaveDid Rahm Emanuel make a shrewd choice by appointing Newark Police Chief Garry McCarthy as police superintendent? McCarthy is an outsider, which means his first loyalty will be to the mayor, not to the police rank and file. But, he’s also an actual cop, which will give him a better chance of earning the department’s respect than Jody Weis. Weis was an FBI man, and cops think feds are overeducated sissies.
(NBC ADDED THE LINK IN THE WORDS POPULAR POLICE BLOG)
A popular police blog seems to think that the bearded McCarthy will bring new grooming standards to the department. Here’s the headline from today’s blog post on the announcement:
THE CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT WILL BE GETTING ANOTHER OUTSIDER AS TOP COP THE SUN-TIMES IS REPORTING - Supt Garry McCarthy
PS: Goatees are against CPD General Orders... So expect that rule to change.
However, one of the site’s commenters is more optimistic, writing, “This McCarthy was the police for many years ,if left to run the department without too much political interference,he could be a very good thing. Nothing wrong with a qualified outsider. Weis was never up to the job.”
Just as Chicago has more than one newspaper, it has more than one cop blog. Another blog popular with police also focuses on the fact that McCarthy is an outsider:
Outsider to be Named Superintendent
We went to bed on the news Osama bin Laden was dead, covered in bacon grease and buried at sea. Now we wake up to Garry McCarthy being crowned by both newspapers as the new superintendent of police.
It will certainly be interesting to see how well he can run up against the entrenched political forces here who appoint gold stars without regard qualifications, educational experience or police ability. We sense another mass bloodletting similar to what happened when J-Fled arrived in town. We wonder if it will turn out any better this time, because it would be hard to see it turning out worse.
Clearly, the cops wanted one of their own running the department. Since Emanuel wasn’t going to do that, they seem to think McCarthy is as good an outsider as they could get.
Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Cops-McCarthy-Needs-to-Shave-121085264.html#ixzz1Mj5GcZdW
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Emanuel to name Newark chief Garry McCarthy as Chicago’s top cop
THE CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT WILL BE GETTING ANOTHER OUTSIDER AS TOP COP THE SUN-TIMES IS REPORTING - Supt Garry McCarthy
PS: Goatees are against CPD General Orders... So expect that rule to change.
Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel today will introduce Newark, N.J. , police chief Garry McCarthy as Chicago’s new police superintendent, sources said, gambling that McCarthy’s big city experience will overcome the fact that he is another outsider.McCarthy replaces Jody Weis, a career FBI agent who rank and file police officers never accepted because they viewed him as an outsider who didn’t have their backs.
Last week, McCarthy, who will celebrate his 52nd birthday later this week, demonstrated that he is keenly aware of the morale problems he is inheriting.
He told the Sun-Times that he would not put on the Chicago Police Department’s uniform without first earning the right to do so by getting certified as an Illinois law enforcement officer.
But it’s going to take a lot more than that to restore morale that flagged under Weis.
Police Board President Demetrius Carney believes that the second-generation cop has the police pedigree to do that.
He said McCarthy walked a beat and commanded three separate New York City precincts before becoming the chief architect of the Big Apple’s crime control strategy.
“He is an outsider. But this time, that outsider is not from the FBI. This is an outsider who understands policing and understands the plight of beat patrol,” Carney said.
Sources said what sold Emanuel was McCarthy’s 30 years of experience leading big-city departments and his proven track record of implementing innovative strategies that worked to reduce crime.
As the New York City Police Department’s former operations chief, McCarthy was the force behind the CompStat program credited with reducing New York’s homicide rate. Under the program, police commanders are called before a review board on a monthly basis and held accountable for crime spikes.
McCarthy also helped call the shots in New York after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
As police director in Newark since 2006, McCarthy’s strategies to combat narcotics and gun violence have been credited with producing a 12 percent reduction in overall crime, a 40 percent decline in shooting incidents and homicides and a 23 percent cut in civilian complaints against his officers In Chicago, McCarthy inherits a Police Department more than 2,300 officers a day short of authorized strength. Emanuel has promised to bolster the number of street officers by 1,000.