She hired him not for his thoughts but because he takes orders

Interim Police Supt. Charlie Beck ‘takes off the gloves’ in major department shakeup, he's a very full of himself man, don't you know
Detectives will be moved to police districts, and a powerful new office will oversee civil-rights reforms inside the department in one of the biggest reorganizations in decades.

By Frank Main and Fran Spielman Jan 30, 2020, 10:59am CST

One of the biggest police reorganizations in Chicago in decades was launched Thursday by Charlie Beck, the former Los Angeles police chief who’s temporarily running the Chicago Police Department.

The changes include assigning detectives from five regional offices to the city’s 22 police districts and creating a powerful bureaucracy to carry out civil-rights reforms.

Beck says it’s no coincidence that the police departments in Los Angeles and New York also assign their detectives to police stations — and that the LAPD also has a powerful office of police reform.

The new organizational chart for the Chicago Police Department “is very similar to [those] two entities that I think are successful,” Beck said in an interview.

Beck, who was the police chief in L.A. from 2009 to 2018, said he never intended to maintain the status quo in Chicago when he took the interim position late last year.

“She didn’t hire me to be a caretaker,” Beck said of Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
“I was the chief of the second-biggest city in America for almost nine years. I’m not a caretaker guy. I’m trying to get things done while I’m here. That was my commitment to her.”Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Nov. 8 introducing former Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck as Chicago’s interim police superintendent. Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

Beck says he’ll move detectives into police districts to solve assaults, robberies, burglaries and thefts. He hopes that change will be completed by the end of the year when the 22 district stations can be expanded to accommodate them. Those detectives will answer to district commanders.

Most of the city’s homicide detectives will remain in five regional detective headquarters, Beck said. But they’ll answer to deputy patrol chiefs instead of the chief of detectives.


The chief of detectives will supervise a separate team of detectives who’ll roam the city to investigate serial killings and other high-profile murders. The chief of detectives also will supervise narcotics and gang investigators, who previously served under the now-disbanded bureau of organized crime.

The department is creating its first counterterrorism bureau, too.

Anthony Riccio, the first deputy superintendent, will be in charge of the department’s crime-fighting operations.

Barbara West will become the No. 3 official in the department. She’ll be the deputy superintendent of the new Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, which includes the police academy.

West will oversee reforms called for in the consent decree that the city entered into after the Justice Department found the police had engaged in systematic civil-rights violations.
“It’s obvious the mayor said, ‘Charlie, take the gloves off.’” — Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum

In November, a federal monitor reported that the police department had missed 37 of 50 deadlines on putting specific reforms into place under the consent decree.

Christy Lopez, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped lead the investigation of the Chicago Police Department, said the creation of the new reform office run by West is “fantastic.”

“It’s quite encouraging that the person who is running this is high-ranking,” Lopez said, adding, “Charlie Beck came from LAPD. They had a very robust internal unit like this.”

Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, said he didn’t know the details of the reorganization but the changes made sense to him.

“He’s putting the resources where they are most needed.”

Wexler, whose group last year recommended changes in the way homicide detectives operate in Chicago, said he wasn’t surprised that Beck was making big changes.

“It’s obvious the mayor said, ‘Charlie, take the gloves off.’”
Sean Malinowski, former chief of staff of the Los Angeles Police Department. LAPD

Beck said his advisors on the reorganization included Sean Malinowski, his former chief of staff in L.A. and a former chief of detectives there. Malinowski is now considered a front-runner in the city’s search for a permanent Chicago police superintendent.

“Was Sean involved? Absolutely. Were other people at CPD? Absolutely,” Beck said.