Charlie Beck previously served as Los Angeles’ police chief and Chicago’s interim police superintendent. He said Chicago’s next top cop will need to make some big changes.
charlie beck
Chicago has seen more police chiefs than mayors in its nearly 200-year history. Occupants of the powerful, high-profile position walk a political tightrope, and have suffered some epic falls. Here’s a look at the legacy of the city’s most recent superintendents.
Twenty weeks after he took over as the Chicago Police Department’s interim superintendent, Charlie Beck officially stepped down from his post Wednesday, handing over a badge to the city’s new top cop David Brown.
Interim Superintendent Beck: Coronavirus a ‘difficult murderer to trace’
CPD Sgt. Clifford Martin, a father of three, died this week. He first experienced symptoms on March 20, stopped working on March 22, and that he’d then been hospitalized for two weeks.
Interim Chicago Police Superintendent Charlie Beck is winding down his brief tenure at the helm of the Chicago Police Department. We ask him about protecting officers during the pandemic, his efforts to restructure the department, gun violence and more.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot says the city will begin enforcing a curfew on the sale of liquor in order to prevent “congregate activity” that’s been seen across the city near stores that sell alcohol.
Citywide crime was down in March compared to last year, but Chicago is currently on pace for more shootings and homicides in 2020.
The Chicago Police Department on Wednesday issued warnings to 56 separate groups of people and made one arrest for failing to abide by the governor’s order to stay home.
Chicago’s mayor says too many people are flouting the governor’s order to stay home and maintain social distance, particularly along the lakefront and at playgrounds. “This situation is deadly serious,” she said Wednesday.
Lawyers for a short-order cook shot by Chicago police trying to arrest him for using a subway train’s gangway doors filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging officers used excessive force in violation of policies laid out in court-monitored police reforms.
Chicago’s interim police superintendent stripped two officers of their police powers pending the outcome of the investigation into their roles in the non-fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect inside a Red Line L station last week.
Chicago’s mayor said video footage of police shooting and wounding a suspect inside a Red Line L station is “extremely disturbing” and that she supports the interim police superintendent’s request for prosecutors to be sent directly to the scene.
A new transit safety plan calls for dozens of police officers on CTA lines and a dedicated support center that will focus on solving crimes committed on the city’s trains and buses.
The arrest came in large part, police said, due to surveillance footage captured by the CTA and witnesses who identified the suspect in photo arrays.
Interim Superintendent Beck calls increases “alarming”
Chicago saw a notable uptick in shootings and homicides in the first month of 2020, but police say that overall, violent crime incidents in Chicago actually decreased in comparison to January 2019.
A guilty plea has reverberations throughout the state. Coronavirus concerns spread in Chicago. A massive restructuring of the Chicago Police Department. And Catholic schools get a financial lifeline.