Ex-Top Cop Spouts That Black Lives Matter Fuels Homicides In Chicago

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jan 2, 2017 6:46PM



Getty Images / Photo: Scott Olson / November 2015

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy appears to be on something of an unofficial press tour/public job interview at the moment and he’s not being shy with throwing out some hard-right bona fides in the process. In recent interviews, McCarthy blamed the Black Lives Matter movement as a contributing factor to homicides in Chicago and said “anti-police sentiment” is fueling crime, although he failed to acknowledge the institutional failures that have contributed to distrust toward to police.

McCarthy on Sunday told AM 970 in New York that anti-police brutality protests in effect bring about negative repercussions on black communities. “So what’s happening, and this is ironic, is that a movement with the goal of saving black lives at this point is getting black lives taken, because 80 percent of our murder victims here in Chicago are male blacks,” McCarthy said, as quoted by The Hill. “Less than half of 1 percent of all the shootings in this city involve police officers shooting civilians.”

In an interview segment that aired on 60 Minutes on Sunday evening, McCarthy said, “officers are under attack. That’s how they feel in this environment.”

“Noncompliance with the law is becoming legitimized,” he added. We’re reaching a state of lawlessness”

McCarthy was fired late in December 2015 amidst mass protests that followed the belated release of police dashcam footage that showed the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. When asked on 60 Minutes if he felt scapegoated, McCarthy replied, “If you want to call it a scapegoat, that’s fine.”

McCarthy’s turn away from nuance is especially disconcerting since he has displayed it at times in the past. Even in a speech where he said he would not have released the McDonald footage, he nevertheless at least acknowledged that legitimate grounds existed for black communities to be suspicious of police. “We have a well-deserved bad reputation in the African-American community... One of the things I’ve done is acknowledged the history,” McCarthy said in September, adding that white police officers were guilty of having enforced segregationist laws.