During the forum’s traditional written question-and-answer session, Shari Runner, former president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League, asked what Beck could do to address “the decades-long issue of the code of silence” within the department.

“First, you can admit that you have an issue, that you have a problem,” Beck said. "I think there are police leaders that have said there’s no such thing. Well, of course there’s such a thing. There are professional codes of silence in almost every profession that is out there.”

“Now, it’s particularly obvious when it happens in policing,” he said, referencing his time in Los Angeles working in internal affairs and arresting fellow officers for wrongdoing. “It is an issue. When you find it, you have to act on it, and you have to be clear. . . .I expect the people that work for me to tell the truth.”

“Code of silence is the antithesis of professionalism in policing, and certainly while I’m here, and certainly my successor will make sure that when we find it—and luckily, that’s not the norm anymore—it’s acted with appropriately,” Beck said.

Beck repeatedly returned to guiding principles of "trust and effectiveness" in his City Club address, drawing comparisons between Los Angeles' path to reform and Chicago's. Los Angeles' tipping points were the beating of Rodney King and the Rampart scandal. Chicago's were Cmdr. Jon Burge and the death of Laquan McDonald, Beck said.

A search for Beck’s replacement is well underway. Applications to Chicago’s Police Board, which oversees the search, will be accepted until 5 p.m. Monday.

Beck was asked whether an insider or outsider might be better suited to the role. “I don’t think it matters whether it’s an outsider or an insider. If it’s an outsider, it has to be an outsider that understands CPD. This is a very complicated organization,” he said.

Beck said he benefited from lending his chief of staff to Johnson in the wake of the Laquan McDonald video release. “I had a little head start . . . some access to CPD. If it is an outsider, it has to be somebody like that. To come in cold here, I think, is a hugely heavy lift.”

An internal candidate “has to be somebody who has had access to what’s going on in the profession nationally, because there are many, many things that Chicago can learn from what’s going on around the nation. One of the reasons I know that we were effective in L.A.” is because Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton sent Beck “around the world” to learn best practices, he said.

Either way, “it’s going to take a different perspective.”

Beck also addressed the new frontier of legalized cannabis in Chicago, saying he did not anticipate any change in violent crime overall as a result, but that dispensaries, which deal in cash due to federal regulations on sales, become a target for robberies.

“In policing, money is the root of all evil, and businesses that are all cash, which cannabis businesses are, are absolutely ripe for robbery, burglary, internal thefts, for having a customer shaken down on the way in,” he said. In Los Angeles, he would guarantee “at least two homicides in cannabis facilities due to armed robbery” annually. “It isn’t the product that’s evil—it’s the cash associated with it.”