Perhaps seven months is too early to evaluate the city’s top cop.
Perhaps seven months is too early to evaluate the city’s top cop.
Jody Weis has not been in his position very long, but already he is facing pointed questions about his readiness for the job.
To this we say, where was all of this concern seven months ago?
When Mayor Daley bypassed Chicago expertise and chose Weis, a career FBI agent who had no policing experience, particularly big city policing, it was a stretch. Interim superintendent Dana Starks was told he had done a good job, but his services would not be necessary. Daley decided he wanted someone from the outside to try to bring a sense of credibility to the force, which had begun to be seen as a scandal-plagued, out-of-control group that needed a thorough housecleaning.
But while Weis seemingly fit the bill as someone who would clean up the force, his policing expertise faced only cursory questioning.
But seven months ago when the aldermen had their chance to question Weis on his policing strategy, most of them took a pass. They asked about diversity, promoting Black officers and choosing a Black deputy superintendent. But fighting crime seemed to be an afterthought, and, after all, Daley had picked him, and for some of them, that was enough. Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) was pointed in questioning Weis’ lack of policing experience back in January when she said, “I want somebody to stop the bad guys on my block.”
Now, of course, in the aftermath of the shootings at the Taste of Chicago, the City Council has called in Weis for a grilling. The mayor has already reportedly given him a piece of his mind, and other cops are grumbling (anonymously) that Weis wasn’t prepared for the Taste and made tactical mistakes that allowed the thugs to take over.
But, before the Taste, there was a 13 percent increase in homicides in the city, and in the last month, at least six officer-involved shootings, and one officer shot and killed. Murders of Chicago Public Schools students escalated.
Truth is, the streets have been dangerous for years, and aldermen basically shirked their responsibility by not grilling Weis on his plans to make them safer. Weis has gone out and prayed with residents and blamed parents for the their children being shot, and now is floating the idea of reinstating the discredited Special Operations Section unit, which was disbanded by Starks.
Weis may yet prove to be competent to do the job. But as the murder rate increases and whole neighborhoods are being held hostage by what seems to be a rise in gang violence and recruitment, he will have to demonstrate that his lack of street policing experience is not a lethal liability.
But this critique by the City Council should have come earlier before he was approved to assume the mantel. It is a critique not only of his job, but theirs and the mayor’s.
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