The Black and the Blue

by Matthew Horace

  Anne Kirkpatrick had been the chief of the police department in Spokane, Washington, until she retired in 2012. If selected, she would be the department’s first woman superintendent. Kirkpatrick was then an instructor with the FBI’s Law Enforcement Executive Development Association in the Seattle area. Originally from Tennessee, Kirkpatrick began her law enforcement career in 1982 as an officer in the Memphis Police Department. She worked there three years before leaving to attend law school in Seattle. After earning a law degree in 1989, she joined the police department in Redmond, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. She was later hired as police chief at two small Washington communities before being named in 2016 to head the department in Spokane, the state’s second-largest city. She arrived in Spokane while the city was wrestling with its own use-of-force controversy. Spokane police officers had been accused of beating and hog-tying janitor Otto Zehm months earlier during a confrontation at a convenience store. Zehm died on the scene three minutes after the officers put a mask over his face that was not attached to oxygen. Initially, police had reported he lunged at an officer, but surveillance video released months later, as in the McDonald case, showed him backpedaling away.

  Perhaps the most widely known of the three was Cedric Alexander, the public safety director in charge of the police department for DeKalb County, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. Alexander had appeared often as a commentator on CNN and other news programs in discussions about police and tensions with African-American communities. In many ways, Alexander seemed like the ideal candidate. He had nearly 40 years of law enforcement experience, with at least three police departments, and experience working in homeland security posts. He had served on President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. As president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, he was on the ground during police controversies in Baltimore and Ferguson. He had worked as an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center. As head of the Rochester (New York) Police Department, he had developed training programs to help police learn how to engage people suffering from mental illness. He had also worked on homeland security issues for the state of New York and for the Transportation Security Administration in Dallas. Alexander’s leadership in DeKalb, however, was clouded by four questionable police shootings in the past two years. In one instance, a white DeKalb officer had fatally shot a naked, unarmed black man in 2014.

  I knew all three finalists. I had worked with Eugene Williams on subcommittees as a member of the National Organization for Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) for years. Whenever I needed something out of Chicago, I called Gene. I worked with Anne Kirkpatrick when she was police chief in Redmond, Washington, and I was second in charge of ATF in Seattle. Anne and I would see each other frequently when I represented ATF at the police chiefs’ association meetings. Alexander and I worked together at NOBLE and CNN. We had been involved in more than a dozen joint interviews, talking about police-related matters in Baltimore, Ferguson, Tulsa, Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, Charleston, and New York. I even knew McCarthy from my days running the ATF office for New Jersey, while he was commanding the Newark Police Department, the state’s largest.

  The mayor took his board’s three choices under advisement and began his own deliberations. He met with each one, and, at one point, Alexander told friends he was all but assured the job. Two weeks after the police board’s press conference to announce the finalists, Emanuel called a press conference of his own to present the city’s new police supervisor to the public. Surprisingly, none of the initial candidates stood by his side. He had rejected all three candidates. Instead, standing next to him was Eddie Johnson, who had not even applied for the job.

  “I believe Eddie Johnson has everything that the city needs,” Emanuel told a stunned crowd. “I happen to believe at this moment—this time—at this critical juncture, he has the command, the character, and the capability to lead. I think Eddie Johnson is the right man at the right time.”

  I’m sure the finalists were stunned by Emanuel’s decision. I’ve been through the process of applying for executive positions. It is a grueling process, involving hours of writing essays and gathering all sorts of documentation, and hours of interviews with numerous department heads. For Emanuel to then give the job to someone who had not undergone that process must have been extremely disappointing, and, to some degree, an insult to all the applicants.

  Many read Johnson’s hiring as a bow by the mayor to the desires of black and Latino aldermen. The previous superintendent had come from the police department in Newark, New Jersey. They argued that another outsider would take too long to learn the machinations of the department and the intricacies of a diverse city of 2.7 million with a unique character. Others were concerned that an outsider might exacerbate already sinking morale among the rank-and-file officers. Latino alderman George Cardenas and other council members who made up the African-American and Latino coalition gave their approval.

  “Eddie Johnson fits the bill, according to the people I’m talking to,” Cardenas said.

  Emanuel said he believed Johnson could rebuild officer morale while being a “bridge to the community,” as police engaged in an all-out battle to tamp down the city’s violence. Williams, some noted, could have filled that role, and he at least said he wanted the job. Still, the mayor, undaunted, said Johnson was his choice. He’d been impressed with Johnson since his days as South Side commander. He praised Johnson’s integrity, recalling a meeting with command staff in which Johnson exercised leadership by saying he would wear a body camera and expected other top officials to do the same. Emanuel’s selection of Johnson temporarily threw the selection process into disarray. Even though the mayor wanted him, he couldn’t be made the permanent head of the department because he had not applied for the job. He could only be made the interim chief. The board would have to begin the hiring process all over again, this time with Johnson as the preferred candidate. Two weeks later, April 13, 2016, the city council made it permanent, approving Johnson’s appointment 50–0.

  In my meeting with Johnson, I found him thoughtful, deliberate, but forceful and very clear about where he wants to go and how he wants to get there. His first year—2016—was eventful. In that year, Johnson was wrestling with the worst violence in Chicago in nearly 20 years. Murders had increased by 40 percent over the previous year to the highest number in Chicago in the past 20 years, all while having undergone a kidney transplant. In May alone, there were 66 murders, with 318 shooting incidents in which 397 people were shot. Nearly half the victims were children. Almost all of them were black. Many of the victims were innocent bystanders, caught in the crossfire of immature, untethered gang members killing rivals in retaliation for the most minute slights, particularly on social media. One said something on Facebook the other didn’t like, or another claimed on Instagram that he was standing on the other’s turf and dared him to come meet him. Another “punked” a rival on Snapchat and the offended party went looking for him.

  According to the University of Chicago Crime Lab, one of every five teenagers wounded or killed by gunfire in Chicago was not the intended victim. For Johnson, it came to a head with the shooting of Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of NBA superstar Dwyane Wade. Aldridge was pushing her infant child in a stroller on the city’s South Side near Dulles School of Excellence, where she was attempting to register some of her four children. Two brothers, one 26, the other 22, started shooting after one of them “exchanged looks” with a man. The man was dropping off women he had picked up in the suburbs and driven into the city. The brothers knew the guy was not from the neighborhood and thought he might be armed. They chased the man down the street, firing at him as they ran. They missed him, but two bullets struck Aldridge, one in the head and another in the arm. She died 45 minutes later at the hospital. To the media, a relative of a famous native son had been killed and the death automatically set it apart from the hundreds of others who’d been shot that year.

/>   Superintendent Johnson knew what everybody else knew: that a handful of “shooters,” gang members police had identified, were behind the murderous crime wave, but people who knew them—ministers, church members, parents, community activists, friends, neighbors, social organizations—wouldn’t help police bring them to justice. Consequently, they were free to continue their reign of terror. He was pissed off. There was no other way to describe it.

  “I’m so sick of every weekend talking about the murders that happen in the street,” he said at a press conference. “And the frustrating part is I’ve told you all countless times, we have 1,400 individuals who are driving the gun violence in this city. This isn’t a mystery. We’ve gotten very good at predicting who will be the victims or perpetrators of gun violence. These guys choose that lifestyle, [and] they continue it, because we continuously show them there’s no consequence.

  “They’re going to keep doing it until we show them we’re serious. I don’t need to preach about the incentive for other leaders to do something about this problem… I feel bad for the Wade family,” he said, glaring at reporters. “I feel bad for the Aldridge family. But I feel bad for all of the families in Chicago who have lost someone unnecessarily because of this silly gun violence that we’re experiencing. These streets belong to the rest of Chicago, not to [gang members].”

  As the death toll rose, the pressure mounted for Johnson to turn things around. At the same time, Johnson was struggling with a mandate to heal a history of crimes and hurts that police had inflicted on black and Latino communities that now had been rubbed especially raw by the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the subsequent year-long cover-up.

  “Laquan McDonald shattered a lot of trust we had in black and white communities,” he told me. “People felt police wouldn’t hold themselves accountable. In the black neighborhoods, they felt police didn’t give them the respect they deserved. Some in the white community felt it was excessive, and it damaged trust among them, but not to the extent that it did in the African-American community. It really tore at the hearts of some black people.”

  Johnson knows how those hearts were broken. As a young black boy growing up in Cabrini-Green, he experienced police from the other side of the badge. The collection of low-income, high-rise apartment units on Chicago’s North Side was Johnson’s home until age 9, when his family moved to a better neighborhood on the city’s South Side. The city began emptying out and demolishing the units in 1995 and completed the task in 2011. At one point, it was home to 15,000 people, crammed into 3,607 apartments. It was considered the most notorious housing project in the nation. Poverty, neglect, and desperation mashed together to produce a dangerous no-man’s-land of drugs, prostitution, robbery, theft, and violence. Johnson can recall as a boy asking permission to pass by adults in the midst of drug transactions on the buildings’ public stairwells on his way to school. Police were a constant in the neighborhood. “There were certain officers we knew to stay away from. I avoided mistreatment, but I know it’s not the same for everyone,” he said.

  To win back lost trust and engender trust where it had not existed before, Johnson is trying to instill a new attitude about police in Latino and African-American neighborhoods. “To do so, we have to engage in non–law enforcement settings,” he said. “That’s particularly true of the young people. If they only see us when we’re arresting someone or getting physical, that shapes their perspective.”

  The Englewood neighborhood was an example of early success. “This past Halloween (2017), we had 500 kids show up for the haunted house in our police station in Englewood. That’s never happened in my entire career as a police officer, and I have been here 29 years. That says to me that we are breaking down the mistrust, not just with kids but with their parents.”

  Additionally, murders declined in the neighborhood significantly, in part due to greater support for law enforcement efforts from residents.

  Johnson’s other strategic move is to change the culture of the police department. He calls it a “heavy lift.”

  Anyone who has read the Justice Department report following its examination of Chicago’s police department clearly understands what heavy lift means. Following the release of the Laquan McDonald video, the Justice Department launched an investigation of the department. The report painted an unflattering picture of an organization replete with poorly trained, reckless police officers, functioning in a cowboy culture where individual officers are largely unaccountable to anyone but themselves and their own rules.

  The report said police were routinely verbally and physically abusive, mostly against African-Americans and Latinos. Police used their guns and badges to bully residents, including children. They handed out their version of street justice by beating people and tasering them indiscriminately. In one instance, a female suspect was handcuffed and sprawled on the ground. One officer ordered the other to “taser that bitch 10 times.” Their record of shooting and killing suspects with impunity was well-documented.

  Racism was at the core of much of Chicago’s police culture, something the mayor readily admitted. “The question isn’t ‘Do we have racism?’” Emanuel said. “We do. The question is ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

  Police misconduct was protected by supervisors and fellow officers, and when it was documented, it largely went unpunished, the report said. The department and its abuses were shrouded in a “code of silence” that the mayor and the union acknowledged, the report said. It cited numerous incidents in which police not only failed to report misconduct by fellow officers, but blatantly lied, even when they knew there was visual evidence, such as video footage, that contradicted their sworn statements. The report cited numerous incidents in which police lies were unmasked by citizen videos. It said officers routinely used the same catchphrases in describing defendants to justify their unnecessary and unlawful use of violence.

  When blacks and Latinos complained, they were largely ignored. White residents had a different experience. An analysis of complaints against Chicago police officers showed a great disparity in response by the department, depending on the race or ethnicity of the person complaining about the abuse. When the complainants were white, the likelihood of action against the officer was six times greater than it was when the complainants were Latinos and three times greater than it was when the complainants were African-Americans.

  The training, as described in the report, was dismal. The Justice Department investigators looked at the department’s training equipment, manuals, tapes, and programs, and they concluded, “[The Chicago Police Department] and the City of Chicago have not provided [adequate] training to CPD officers for many years, to the disservice not only of those officers but to the public they serve. Officers at all ranks, from new recruits to the superintendent, agree the training is inadequate.”

  After reading the report, I agree. The report was the worst I have ever seen.

  As an example, it noted that one class on the use of deadly force had officers viewing video made 35 years prior, long before key Supreme Court decisions altered the standards used to evaluate the reasonableness of use of force. A training official said the police department is using lawsuits to “measure training effectiveness,” because the lack of quality training is resulting in civil lawsuits. Another officer said, “Our coworkers are going to die because of no training.”

  After recruits finish training at the police academy, they are assigned to what’s called “field training officers,” or FTOs, who are supposed to mentor them through their rookie months of active policing. One ranking supervisor called the program a “hot mess,” another official described it simply as “terrible,” and a third said the FTOs are simply “warm butts in a seat” who do not provide any real training. The training facility, built in 1976, and the equipment used there are outdated and in disrepair, making trainings difficult and potentially dangerous.

  Johnson’s goal is to develop a wide range of progressive policies: new use-of-force
rules; more scenario-based, use-of-force training rooted in de-escalation; annual psychological and physical examinations to help officers perform better and to give them a pathway to help in their high-pressure job; and a program to match criminals with jobs and help get them off the street.

  “One of the fundamental things we’re doing is far more training,” Johnson told me. “Our officers are starving for [on-the-job] training. We get training and the training wanes. Next year, we will start providing 16 hours of training every year for every officer. By 2021, they’ll be getting 40 hours a year to keep them fresh on best practices and mandatory training on use of force. They want it. We’ve also done a terrible job of protecting our officers’ mental health. We are in the process of revamping that to include either annual or biannual mental health screenings. We owe it to them to unpack some of that stuff. We have to make it normal for officers to seek mental health therapy.”

  Johnson added, “There will be quick action when officers violate policy. It’s the first time in the history [of the department that we’ve done this]. In the old days it would take us weeks, if not months, to do something with the officers-involved incidents. Now, if they provide me with evidence that policy has been violated, I will take action within 48 hours.

  “If it turns out the incidents were because of training, then we will handle it and get more training. If it’s egregious conduct, we will deal with it accordingly. My message to officers is you either change or you find something else to do.”