Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking a political beating, largely because of crime and problems in the police department. Charles Rex Arbogast / AP file
A NBC News online article about the firing of Chicago Police Superintendent Gerry McCarthy includes an excerpt about Chicago Police corruption from “Corrupt Illinois,” a co-authored book by Dick Simpson, former GCI scholar and professor of political science. Simpson is also quoted in the article.
Critics have also accused city officials of papering over the department’s problems with panels and re-organized internal-affairs units.
Those critics include Dick Simpson, a former city alderman and a law professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. He co-wrote a book called “Corrupt Illinois” that devotes an entire chapter to Chicago police corruption.
“Chicago’s failure to rein in its errant officers, the department’s lax discipline, and its active involvement in cover-ups have led Chicago’s 12,000 police officers to believe that they can break the law with near-total impunity,” Simpson and co-author Thomas J. Gradel wrote.
That history set up the department, and Emanuel, for the current crisis, in which the city has been accused of delaying an internal investigation until after the mayor’s April re-election.
Had the scandal broken during the campaign, “he would have lost,” Simpson said in an interview.
