Chicago police union chief says he will leave department rather than continue disciplinary hearing he called a ‘farce’
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The controversial head of Chicago’s largest police union said Monday he will retire from the Chicago Police Department — an announcement that came just after he took the stand in a disciplinary hearing that could have ended with his firing.
John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, also declared that he will run for mayor in 2023, alluding multiple times to his combative relationship with Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and said he felt the outcome of the proceedings against him was predetermined.
“It was pretty evident very early on that this cake was already baked,” Catanzara said, “I am going to be at human resources first thing in the morning, and I am going to be retiring. I will no longer be a Chicago police officer. … No one will be able to touch me.”
“This has all been a farce from the get-go,” he added, later saying to reporters: “There was never a possibility under God’s green earth that I was ever going to give this mayor the ability to utter the words, ‘I fired him.’ ”
When asked how he can expect to lead a police union after stepping down as an officer, Catanzara said, “What’s different? … The city has to deal with me. That’s been the point I’ve always made. The mayor can hate me all she wants. I really don’t give a damn. I’m still the elected member and leader of this union.”
Catanzara said he went through the first day of the hearing because he wanted to get his claims on record that his former commander, Ronald Pontecore, was “obstructing justice” when he canceled a police report Cantanzara filed against former Superintendent Eddie Johnson. Pontecore is not accused by the city of any wrongdoing.
The FOP head had spent a good deal of Monday unapologetically answering questions from attorneys over past conduct and social media postings, at one point saying: “I don’t deny that the language used would be categorized as crass or vulgar to many people, but if that was a fireable offense, our mayor would be fired.”
When pressed on specific comments by attorneys for the city, Catanzara had refused to back down from his remarks, insisting he was either joking or stating facts.
For example, when asked about a Facebook post in November 2016 in which he wrote “Its (sic) seriously time to kill these m-----f------,” after the shooting of a Wayne State University police officer and a suspect who was still at large, Catanzara said he was referring to the death penalty.
“I was hoping when they catch him, they kill him because I’m sick of police officers being killed,” Catanzara said to Jim Lydon, the attorney for the city. “How about you?”
The quasi-legal proceeding came after a year in which Catanzara, an officer since 1995, has continued to make headlines, including for fighting the city’s current COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
At the hearing, attorneys for the city painted him as just that — an attention-seeking officer willing to use profane and insulting language on social media and even file bogus case reports, without proper investigation, against the highest ranking department members, including then-superintendent Johnson for his participation in a 2018 peace march on the Dan Ryan Expressway.
“This case is about an officer, John Catanzara, who violated the rules of conduct in efforts to bring attention to himself and in the process thumbed his nose at superior officers and department directors along the way,” Lydon said. “The words and images John Catanzara uses will mostly speak for themselves.”
The Chicago Police Board hearing had been expected to last three days. A determination on any discipline against Catanzara had not been expected until early next year.
Police Superintendent David Brown had filed charges in January to fire Catanzara, citing a long list of alleged infractions that brought discredit to the department and impeded its mission.
Tim Grace, Catanzara’s attorney, acknowledged his client’s comments on Facebook were “vulgar” but argued that speech not be curtailed.
“More speech is always better speech,” Grace said. “Either you believe in free speech or you don’t.”
Catanzara, whom rank-and-file officers elected as their union head while he was under investigation, faces dozens of Police Department rule violations connected to 18 allegations related to the inflammatory statements and to the filing of the false police reports.
The public showdown is a long time coming for an officer who has largely escaped serious punishment despite a lengthy history of complaints.
Since the public announcement of the findings a year ago, Catanzara has continued to make controversial remarks, including his initial sympathetic comment about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, though he faces no discipline for those statements. Nonetheless, there have been widespread calls for his resignation or firing — not to mention a rebuke from national FOP leadership.
The dismissal action against Catanzara stemmed, in part from a Civilian Office of Police Accountability investigation that probed Catanzara’s social media postings, concluding that the speech had discredited the Police Department and proved he could not serve impartially.
“Officer Catanzara’s statements have the potential to create problems in maintaining the discipline and harmony in the Department,” said the June 2020 report.
The false police reports were subject of a separate investigation by the department’s bureau of internal affairs, which alleged that Catanzara, who’s been relieved of his police powers, filed a false report against Johnson in 2018 accusing him of breaking the law by participating in and allowing an anti-violence march on the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Catanzara then filed a second report against his former commander, Pontecore, after he ordered his staff to delete the Johnson report from the department’s computer system.
Catanzara has said he filed the police report against Johnson because he didn’t have much faith that filing a complaint against him for a disciplinary infraction would do much good.
During one moment of questioning Monday, Catanzara himself seemed to signal he understood the totality of the disciplinary charges he faces.
When Lydon brought up that he was still a Chicago police officer when he made a certain social media post, Catanzara responded, “I technically still am until this show’s over.”
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.
