Top Cop Failed Chicago When He Didn't Fire Lieutenant Who Lied

CHICAGO — Police Superintendent David Brown has failed Chicagoans.

Not for the obvious reasons: The skyrocketing shootings and murders, and dozens of children bloodied by bullets on his watch. His bungled response to vandals and looters who destroyed neighborhood business districts, and downtown — twice. The slow road to implement police reforms. The recent working group on use-of-force policies that participants called a "sham."

The former Texas lawman let down Chicagoans last week when he signaled to his beleaguered department — and Chicagoans who don't trust it — that police officers who get caught lying as part of an independent investigation don't have to worry about getting fired.

Inspector General Joe Ferguson recommended the termination of a police lieutenant for "false statements and material omissions" about actions taken after officers found former top cop Eddie Johnson passed out behind the wheel of his idling police vehicle after a night of heavy drinking.

Ferguson's investigation determined the unnamed lieutenant violated Rule 14, making false statements written or oral. Violating Rule 14 is an act of police misconduct that's supposed to be a career killer for cops.

In Chicago, of course, that has never been the case. But last year, when four cops got fired for being involved in a cover-up of Laquan McDonald's murder, there was a glimmer of hope that might change.

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Members of the Chicago Police Board wrote an opinion meant to "impress upon members the Department of the importance of telling the complete truth inclusive of the relevant circumstances and context."

"An officer's responsibility to tell the truth is at the heart of Rule 14 and at the heart of community trust in the police," they wrote.

And when Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired Johnson last year, she said that particular moment must be a "turning point for the Chicago Police Department and the way things are done in this city."

MORE ON PATCH: Chicago Top Cop's Termination Is A Police Reform Game Changer

At the time, top sources told me Lightfoot personally put police brass on notice that they would be called in for questioning, and her message was clear: If you lie, you will be fired.

It seemed the probe of Johnson's boozy traffic stop might offer a chance to target what University of Chicago law professor Craig Futterman, an expert on police misconduct here, calls the "reflexive machinery of denial" used for "covering up the big, small and everything in between."

Brown — whose No. 1 job is to be a trust-building top cop — clearly didn't get the message.

All he had to do was sign off on the inspector general's recommendations. That would have sent a definitive message to any officer facing interrogation — "If you lie, you die," as the saying goes about Rule 14.

Instead, Brown single-handedly overruled the inspector general, saying there was "insufficient evidence to prove by a preponderance of the evidence" that the unnamed lieutenant "willfully" lied to investigators, and he ordered a 21-day suspension instead.

As of Monday, Brown had offered no explanation for his decision to refute the findings of an investigation independent of City Hall and the police department, except to say he didn't agree.

"The Superintendent did not agree that the lieutenant deliberately withheld material information," a police spokesman said. "Beyond that, we are not going to comment on disciplinary decisions or how they are made."

So far, Brown, himself, has remained silent — as in the "thin blue line" code of silence that harbors corruption in the police department and destroys community trust.

For that, Brown let the city down.

Unfortunately, he's not the only one.

On Monday, Lightfoot told reporters she didn't have a hand in Brown's decision but agreed with it.

The mayor explained she thinks the top cop's decision "was consistent with the actual facts."

Which facts, exactly? Lightfoot didn't say. Maybe she's talking about a detail Chicagoans don't know about tucked in the inspector general's full report.

But we can't be sure. Lightfoot's administration continues to keep the report secret.

The mayor promised us the mess former Superintendent Johnson created would become a defining moment, a turning point in the way things get done in Chicago.

All we got was more of the same.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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