The top police official in Chicago on Wednesday slammed “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett for dragging the city’s “reputation through the mud” by making making bogus allegations about a hate crime against him.
“I’m offended by what has happened and I’m also angry. I love the city of Chicago and the Chicago police department, warts and all. But this publicity stunt was a scar that Chicago didn’t earn and certainly didn’t deserve,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said during a press conference Thursday morning. “When that didn’t work Smollett paid $3,500 to stage this attack and drag Chicago’s reputation through the mud in the process.”
[Read: Jussie Smollett arrested for felony disorderly conduct, filing a false police report]
Johnson said Smollett’s lies were compounded because of the massive amount of attention the story got in the national media, which further “painted this city” in a negative light.
“How can an individual who has been embraced by the city of Chicago turn around and slap everyone in this city in the face by making these false claims?” Johnson asked.
Chicago’s reputation has suffered in recent years due to record-high levels of gun violence, as well as the fallout after a local white police officer killed a black teenager in 2014.
“Now, our city has problems, we know that. We have problems that have affected people from all walks and we know that. But to put the national spotlight on Chicago for something that is both egregious and untrue is simply shameful,” said Johnson.
Murders in the Windy City hit an all-time high in 2016, when 762 people killed. They dipped to 650 in 2017, and 561 in 2018. But even as the third-largest city in the country, no other city came near its 2016-2018 violent streak of nearly 1,900 homicides. Baltimore, the runner-up, documented 1,000 murders in that three-year span.
“I just wish that the families of gun violence in this city got this much attention because that’s who really deserves the amount of attention that we are giving to this particular incident,” the superintendent said.
The trial for Jason Van Dyke, the former Chicago police officer who fatally shot black teenager Laquan McDonald, finally concluded in January when he was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison.
A new report published this month found Chicago is the most corrupt city in America, based on the number of public corruption convictions. Chicago had 1,731 federal corruption convictions from 1976 to 2017. The second-highest region, the Central District of California, had 1,534 convictions.
Still, Johnson said Smollett’s claim that he was attacked in a hate crime by two white men last month may have done lasting damage on the Illinois city.
Smollett said initially that masked men beat him up and put a rope around his neck while yelling racial and homophobic slurs, which many said was a modern-day lynching. But later reports said the two men were Nigerian citizens and friends of Smollett’s.
Chicago police said Thursday that Smollett orchestrated the incident and paid the two men to pretend to hurt him so that he would gain national attention at a time when he was being written off Fox’s prime-time show “Empire.”
Smollett had planned to blame President Trump for inciting the violence he experienced, according to several outlets.
“Absolute justice would be an apology to this city that he smeared, admitting what he did. And then be man enough to offer what he should offer up in terms of all the resources that were put into this,” Johnson said.
