Search firm to look nationwide for next top cop, public school ratings dropped and more in your Chicago news roundup
Former Chicago Police Supt. David Brown.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file
Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about an eight-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.
— Matt Moore (@MattKenMoore)
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Top story
Search firm hired to find Chicago’s permanent police superintendent
A search firm specializing in law enforcement will lead the nationwide search for Chicago’s permanent police superintendent — a search with a fast turnaround, May 7 application deadline.
The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, Chicago’s fledgling civilian oversight commission, announced yesterday it has hired Public Sector Search & Consulting.
Over the past five years, the firm that “works exclusively on searches for police executives” has spearheaded “more than 50 searches” — 18 in “major U.S. cities,” officials said. The Chicago search will be “led by two retired police chiefs.”
Public Sector Search & Consulting is currently hunting for an assistant chief and deputy chief in Seattle; police chiefs in Ithaca, N.Y., Steamboat Springs, Colo., and St. Joseph, Mo.; and an assistant chief in Bellevue, Wash., according to the firm’s website.
The search for a permanent replacement for newly-departed Chicago police Supt. David Brown was listed under “Coming Soon.” Also on that list: searches for police chiefs in Louisville, Ky., and Forest Grove, Ore., and a division chief in Wheat Ridge, Colo.
Earlier this week, attendees at a community forum, held by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, advocated for CPD’s next leader to be chosen from within the department.
Several participants told the commission casting a nationwide net was a step in the wrong direction and that the next superintendent should have a fundamental understanding of Chicago that can only come from years of experience in the city.
“This nonsense of bringing in people from outside the city of Chicago and expecting them to understand the complications and things that our communities go through has been an abject failure,” one participant said.
More news you need
- Former police Supt. Brown will be questioned under oath by lawyers for a schizophrenic man who suffered brain injuries when he was body-slammed by a police officer. At a hearing last week, a judge ruled city lawyers withheld evidence from lawyers for Bernard Kersh by failing to turn over a letter in which Brown said Officer Jerald Williams used excessive force when he slammed Kersh onto the sidewalk. More on the city’s handling of this police abuse suit from our Andy Grimm.
- The Chicago Board of Education yesterday voted to replace its school rating policy with one that’s intended to provide information about a range of school characteristics. The current rating policy has been sharply criticized for relying too heavily on test scores and unfairly branding schools with labels used as justification for closures.
- Parents and teachers begged the Chicago Board of Education yesterday to keep their school intact after a school operator abruptly announced they were closing it. Hope Institute Learning Academy — which serves students with special needs alongside general ed students — has a contract with Chicago Public Schools to run the school. Teachers accused the organization of closing the school just weeks after they voted to unionize.
- Following the news of Jerry Springer’s death at age 79 at his home in suburban Chicago, Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper looked back on the legacy of the longtime TV host. Springer was unapologetically controversial, undeniably talented, at times charismatic, infuriatingly exploitative, shameless and yet self-aware, Roeper writes.
- The white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 has died in hospice care in Louisiana, the Associated Press reports. Carolyn Bryant Donham was 88.
- A new wheelchair and bicycle accessible bridge over DuSable Lake Shore Drive opened on the South Side yesterday morning to help the surrounding communities better access the lakefront. The rebuilt 43rd Street pedestrian bridge leads right to Burnham Park.
- The Juice WRLD mural in the West Loop that became a shrine for the late Chicago rapper was mysteriously painted over last week. No one has claimed responsibility for erasing the Juice WRLD mural and another mural that depicted the late Chicago DJ Frankie Knuckles.
- A tree, among the oldest living things in the city, is set to come down Monday. The bur oak, believed to be 250 to 300 years old, is dying, according to staff at Lincoln Park Zoo, where the tree sits cordoned off. Our Stefano Esposito gets to the root of the tree’s fate.
- In yesterday’s newsletter, we told you about Imani, the piping plover who bird experts say has returned to Illinois on Tuesday to nest — if he can find a female. By this morning, birders said Imani had welcomed a male and female plover at his North Side nesting grounds, sparking hopes that he’ll mate this year. Love may be in store for Imani after all.
A bright one ✨
From Pilsen to Fulton Market, Nate Otto’s murals find beauty in the dense spaces of the city
Cities within a city — that’s what muralist Nate Otto has created with his half a dozen murals throughout Chicago.
“You see these buildings around you at all times,” says Otto, 49.
He sees his murals as a way of “composing” the environments that Chicagoans live in and presenting those in his art.
In a recent piece in Fulton Market, a blue and green cityscape fits neatly into a rectangle 20 feet by 10 feet on an apartment building at 160 N. Elizabeth St. About two miles away in Pilsen, similar silhouettes make up another cityscape, but this one shows a denser neighborhood portrayed in the colors of the Mexican flag — a nod to the community that makes up much of the area.
Nate Otto’s first mural, at Interior Define, 833 W. Armitage Ave.
Provided
The Pilsen piece, done in 2019, resembles most of his earlier murals. The city emerges from the bottom and the top of the painting, reflected by a blue sky with cartoon-like clouds floating through the center.
In the Fulton Market mural, the same types of buildings tell a different story — this one reflects the rapidly developing neighborhood it’s set in, with the nearby Chicago River snaking its way through the piece. Unlike Otto’s previous murals, it includes green space.
“I wanted it to be something that invoked the idea of open space,” he says. “Since that area has been so developed, there’s still snippets of the natural.”
Our Katie Anthony has more on Otto and his work.
For more on Chicago’s public art and the stories behind the pieces, subscribe to our weekly Murals and Mosaics newsletter.
From the press box ????⚾
- It’s Draft Day for the NFL. Patrick Finley, Jason Lieser and Mark Potash weigh in on who they think the Bears should pick.
- In his latest, Rick Telander asks: the Bears got a strong return for the No. 1 pick in the draft, but will it turn out to be a good deal?
- The Bears must draft with Justin Fields in mind, Finley argues.
- This year’s draft will strongly shape GM Ryan Poles’ rebuild after unloading the No. 1 pick, Lieser writes.
- Cubs reliever Michael Fulmer told manager David Ross about the team’s closer conundrum: “Things will get better.”
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