Someone had to go, and according to the Chicago Sun-Times, the someone is Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who was reportedly fired by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Tuesday amid multiple controversies involving the Chicago Police Department.
"He has become an issue, rather than dealing with the issue, and a distraction," Emanuel said, according to the Washington Post.
Chicago has been in the news a lot lately, due mostly to recently released video of Officer Jason Van Dyke killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Van Dyke shot the teen 16 times as he was seemingly walking away from officers more than a year ago. Multiple protests have followed the video's release, a release that city officials attempted to block, with many protesters demanding a change at the top for the Police Department.
Insiders say that McCarthy's ouster is a direct result of the fallout from Laquan's death and the death of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee, who was killed in an act of gang violence. The Sun-Times writes that the "headlines" from both cases had "become too much" for the embattled superintendent.
McCarthy's firing comes after Chicago's Black Caucus and the Sun-Times called for the superintendent to go. The Sun-Times reports that McCarthy was "shell-shocked" by the news.
Chicago, under his tenure, has been plagued by both street violence and a rash of controversial police-related shootings, including the 2012 shooting death of Rekia Boyd, who was shot by Detective Dante Servin.
In a controversial move, a week after Servin was acquitted in Boyd's death, McCarthy defended the detective, saying that he shouldn't have been indicted on involuntary manslaughter charges because he "hit the individual who he was aiming at" and only "happened to hit" Boyd. His defense came at an inopportune time. Uprisings had just errupted in Baltimore over the police-related death of Freddie Gray. Critics considered it "insensitive."
Now the "insensitive" police superintendent is gone.
Emanuel said that it was because of "the undeniable fact that the public trust in the leadership of the department has been shaken and eroded," according to the Washington Post.