Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired the latest salvo against the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in a press conference Wednesday, firing back at officers over comments made about a planned bagpipe tribute for fallen CPD officer Ella French that was scrapped by a deputy supervisor.
Lightfoot accused Chicago police of “hijack[ing]” fallen officer Ella French’s procession from the University of Chicago medical center to the Cook County medical examiner’s office when they massed to perform the tribute, as is reportedly traditional for the Chicago Police Department.
As The Daily Wire reported previously, Lightfoot claimed the bagpipe tribute was scrapped because of COVID-19 concerns. The Cook County medical examiner’s office responded by telling a WGN reporter that there were no COVID-19 restrictions governing bagpipe tributes.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that officers were told the tribute was called off because of time constraints and that a CPD deputy supervisor told officers readying for the tribute that “we don’t have time for this s***.”
“Ignoring a sacred ritual, [First Deputy Police Supt. Eric] Carter impatiently declared: ‘We don’t have 20 minutes for this s***.” He demanded the Chicago Fire Department ambulance bearing French’s body be taken directly into the medical examiner’s office, skipping the Emerald Society’s traditional playing of bagpipes,” the Sun-Times noted, based on a recording of the incident. “‘We’re not waiting on the bagpipes. Go ahead and get the vehicle inside.”
On Wednesday, in a contentious press conference, Lightfoot laid the blame on CPD, telling reporters that officers tried to “hijack” French’s procession, preventing the family from having adequate time with French’s body ahead of the autopsy.
“There was no official honor guard that night,” Lightfoot said.
‘There was — let me choose my words carefully — a well-meaning but not well-organized group that wanted to hijack the procession, which would have meant that the family would have been delayed exponentially in getting to the morgue,” she added.
She then accused unnamed individuals of trying to “savage” the deputy supervisor who made the call.
“So the call was made, under those circumstances, to focus on the family,” she said. “Eric Carter made the right call. I support what he did and I’m horrified that in this moment people are trying to savage him for whatever agenda or purpose.”
Lightfoot went on to rail against the media for portraying a rift between the mayor and the police department, based on an incident that happened on Saturday, when Lightfoot appeared at the University of Chicago medical center to visit French’s partner, who was critically wounded in the same incident, only to find officers sitting vigil for their wounded colleague. Those officers — a group of about a dozen — turned their back on the mayor.
Chicago city alderman Matt O’Shea, who represents an area of the city home to many of Chicago’s police officers, told the Sun-Times that CPD is at a “breaking point” with Lightfoot.
“Our police officers have been under siege, under-appreciated, and thrown under the bus for the last year and a half,” O’Shea said. “They feel — and rightfully so — that leadership across this country, across this city do not have their back.”
“Anybody who was working Saturday night as those calls came over the radio and they learned of what had happened to their colleagues — that’s a tipping point,” he continued. “And it’s a tipping point that many of us have been waiting to happen as the unbelievable violence we see in communities all across this city, where criminals have absolutely no regard for human life, no fear of the consequences of their actions. To shoot at point-blank range two Chicago police officers. We are a city in crisis.”