Garry McCarthy

McCarthy joined the New York City Police Department in 1981 at age 22. He rose through the ranks and became Deputy Commissioner of Operations in 2000. McCarthy was in the middle of ground zero during the September 11 attacks, working closely with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani to operate an emergency response command post. While with the NYPD, he held a variety of positions around the city, served as commander of several different precincts and eventually was in charge of the NYPD's CompStat program.[4]

In 2006, McCarthy left his position with the New York Police Department to take over the Police Department of Newark, New Jersey. He was chosen for this role by Mayor Cory Booker,[5] and appeared with Booker in addition to his daughter Kyla McCarthy in the documentary series Brick City. McCarthy presided over a sharp reduction in crime during his tenure in Booker's administration in Newark with homicides declining 28 percent, shootings declining 46 percent, and overall crime declining 21 percent.[4] (During the 2020 Democratic Primary debates, Vice-President Biden nick-named McCarthy as "Giuliani's guy" in an attack towards Senator Booker.)

McCarthy was hired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to take over the Chicago Police Department shortly after Emanuel's election in early 2011. McCarthy was the City of Chicago's highest paid public employee, earning an annual salary of over $260,000.[6][7] The number of crimes[8] and murders in Chicago declined during his tenure (with murders declining from 525 in 2011 to 505 in 2012 to 415 in 2013).[9] In an investigative article by Chicago Magazine reporters David Bernstein and Noah Isackson, it was asserted that the decline was in part due to the unjustified re-categorization of murders as undetermined and then if it is later determined to be a murder, tallying the total to the prior years' statistics.[8][10][11] McCarthy responded that the article is "patently false" and criticized its reliance on anonymous sources.[12] A 2012 audit by the Chicago Inspector General determined that the Chicago Police Department had under-counted aggravated assault and aggravated battery victims by 25 percent by not following state guidelines by counting each incident rather than each victim.[13][14][15] McCarthy attributed the error to the administration of the prior police superintendent, Jody Weis.[13][14]

On October 20, 2014, Laquan McDonald was murdered by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. Laquan McDonald, a young black boy, was 17 years old and was shot 16 times.[16] A cover-up of this incident occurred, lasting 400 days, yet McCarthy had seen the video footage a few days after the murder occurred.[17][18] When the video was released to the public following a court order, activists condemned police violence, the code of silence, and racism in the Chicago Police Department and called on Mayor Emanuel, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to resign.[19][20][21] McCarthy did not resign, but was terminated by Rahm Emanuel.[22]

In April 2022, McCarthy was announced as the interim police chief of Willow Springs, Illinois, a town of 5,857 people near the Cook and DuPage county border.[23]