McCarthy Takes Over As Acting Police Superintendent
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel isn't the only new city official getting down to business.
As Emanuel assumed the Mayor's Office on Monday, Garry McCarthy also assumed the role of acting police superintendent.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported McCarthy made a "beeline" to Chicago Police Headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave., right after Emanuel was sworn in.
McCarthy says he has met with top department brass.
He is waiting for the final approval of the City Council before he claims the role of police superintendent officially.
McCarthy was the police director in Newark, N.J., when Emanuel selected him to run the Chicago Police Department.
He will replace acting Supt. Terry Hillard, who came out of retirement to take over the department after controversial Supt. Jody Weis resigned in March. Hillard also served as superintendent from 1998 to 2004.
Earlier this month before Emanuel was sworn in, some aldermen said even though McCarthy, like Weis, is from outside the Police Department, he won't have the same strikes against him that Weis did.
"The big difference that is offered by Garry McCarthy that did not exist in Jody Weis' background is that McCarthy is a municipal cop; a New York cop who walked the beat, who worked his way up," Ald. Edward Burke (14th) said earlier this month.
But there were also revelations this month that federal authorities were probing the Newark Police Department, after the state's American Civil Liberties Union complained of rampant misconduct and lax internal oversight.
The ACLU found more than 400 complaints over a 2 1/2 year period, with most in the internal affairs division. Of the 261 complaints in that division, only one complaint was found credible, which raises a red-flag for the ACLU.
"There were things that could have been done by then-Director McCarthy, said the ACLU's Alex Shalom said earlier this month. "But I do want to stress it's not something he could have solved on his own."
McCarthy said he took action to reverse the generations of problems within the Newark Police Department.
