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:
[Sun Times] 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.
- [Tribune] Newark, N.J., police Director Garry McCarthy, who debuted innovative and controversial crime-fighting techniques during a long career in New York, will be named Chicago's new police superintendent on Monday, a source with Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel's transition team said Sunday.
McCarthy, who was a contender for the Chicago job in 2003, was one of three finalists named Friday by the Chicago Police Board following weeks of interviewing and background checking. While the board is not scheduled to present its list to Emanuel for official action until he is sworn in May 16, the mayor-elect never planned on waiting that long and conducted his own candidate search that put McCarthy at the top.
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.