Nineteen City Council members have signed a letter expressing “disappointment and dismay” that a new independent commission charged with searching for Chicago’s next top cop hasn’t granted a follow-up interview to the city’s well-respected patrol chief who applied for the job.
Anthony Driver, president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, shot back on Wednesday saying the letter was “completely inappropriate” and complaining it was sent to the media before commission members saw it.
“It’s frustrating but it’s not unexpected,” Driver said while discussing outside influences affecting the process. “That is the Chicago way and that’s exactly why our commission was created — and to rid ourselves of that. I’m 100% confident that every person who applied for this position was treated fairly.”
The commission is leading a first-of-its-kind superintendent search after being created by the City Council two years ago.
In their letter, the City Council members noted that Chief of Patrol Brian McDermott submitted a cover letter and resume on May 6 and was interviewed over the phone. But he wasn’t given a follow-up interview despite “his impressive qualifications and deep commitment to the Chicago Police Department,” they wrote.
McDermott is the third highest-ranking department member and the most experienced chief, the City Council members said, adding that “he led CPD from the front lines during our most trying times, including through periods of civil unrest and the ongoing reform efforts outlined in the consent decree.
“For a process that purports to be ‘community-driven’ as well as ‘inclusive, collaborative and transparent,’ overlooking Chief McDermott as a candidate for police superintendent calls into question the validity of the search process and community listening tour,” they wrote. “Residents at the [commission’s] tour stop at Wentworth Park on May 10 spoke passionately about their desire to have Chief McDermott serve as Chicago’s next police superintendent.”
McDermott didn’t respond to a request for comment. He replaced interim Supt. Fred Waller as the patrol chief in 2020.
Driver said the commission has conducted phone interviews and two rounds of formal interviews and is now on pace to deliver three candidates to Mayor Brandon Johnson by the July 14 deadline, if not before then.
He only spoke generally about the letter and wouldn’t confirm whether McDermott was even up for the job, though he insisted he has “a tremendous amount of respect” for the chief.
At the same time, he acknowledged that applicants can be written off based on their backgrounds and noted that City Council members “do not have access” to the same information as his team.
“As the commission engages in an independent process and something comes out along the lines that disqualifies your candidate,” Driver said, “you have to ask yourself the question, does the commission then have the right to disqualify a candidate or does the commission have to be worried about political pressure or community pressure or any underlying influence where our whole job should be finding the right … people to submit to the mayor?”
He slammed the City Council members for using a public relations firm to send the letter to members of the media before the commission received a copy. “We have no way to even verify whether it’s real or not because it was never sent to us,” he said.
This isn’t the first time in recent history that a superintendent search has stirred controversy.
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel rejected three finalists recommended by the Chicago Police Board, the body that previously led the searches, and chose then-Chief of Patrol Eddie Johnson, who hadn’t even applied for the job.
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the former police board president, then picked David Brown just a day after being presented a list of finalists, installing the retired Dallas police chief after closely eyeing him and raising questions over whether she had subverted a process she had vowed to respect.
But as the commission launched its first search, a new issue emerged: Lobbying campaigns for specific candidates cropped up as the panel began holding a series of public meeting to get insight from residents.
Aside from a member of one of the new Police District Councils apparently coordinating one effort, elected officials had stayed out of it.
On Wednesday, the City Council members who signed the letter argued they had every right to complain about the commission’s failure to give McDermott a sit-down interview. Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) noted that members of the body “created this system and we can amend it.”
“I voted against it for this very reason,” Hopkins told the Sun-Times at City Hall. “I didn’t think it was the right decision to delegate hiring authority for one of the most important positions in city government to people who are not elected.”
Hopkins said not meeting with McDermott “highlights that fact that it was a mistake to create this process in the first place. This decision should be made by the City Council and the mayor. Period.”
Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th), whose Far Southwest Side ward is home to scores of Chicago cops, insisted the letter doesn’t amount to “interference” in the process.
“I think it’s someone who answers to 50,000-plus people in my community about an increase in crime we’ve seen citywide and in our community,” O’Shea said of himself. “We want the strongest leaders to be in the mix. We want the best possible leadership moving forward. We have to answer for this. We have to answer for crime.”
O’Shea said he’s known McDermott for nearly three decades and thinks he has done “an admirable job leading the troops” at a time when morale among the rank-and-file has hit rock-bottom.
“It’s extremely important moving forward that the men and women out there each and every night putting their lives on the line have leadership that they look up to. … I don’t know that Brian McDermott should be the next superintendent,” he said. “But he most definitely should be in the process.”
But Joe Ferguson, the city’s former inspector general, said the letter smacks of “rank political showmanship at its worst.”
“Many of the signatories to this letter voted to codify the CCPSA selection process this letter threatens to undermine,” Ferguson said in a text message. “The commission is showing it is above politics and is trying to pick just on merit, and is now being undermined for doing just that.
“There is a time and place for the politicking,” he said. “This was not it.”