The head of Chicago’s police union resigned from his post amid a board hearing over “bigoted” and “hostile remarks” he made on social media, in the assessment of his district commander.
Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara resigned Tuesday after revealing during a board hearing about his controversial social media habit that he planned to leave the department and maybe even run for mayor.
“Finally!!! Let’s go, Brandon,” Catanzara wrote in the remarks column of his retirement papers.
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Catanzara was subjected to a three-day hearing after he was accused of filing false police reports against high officials, making “obscene” social media posts before his election as union head, and insubordination, among the 11 Chicago Police Department rules he allegedly violated.
In the middle of the first day of Catanzara’s hearing, the officer abruptly announced that he was resigning, declared the proceedings a “farce,” and disparaged Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her administration, according to the Chicago Tribune. The union president then said he would remain the head of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 and that he may run against Lightfoot in 2023.
“There was never a possibility under God’s green Earth that I was ever going to give [Lightfoot] the ability to utter the words, ‘I fired him,'” Catanzara told reporters.
Lightfoot accused Catanzara of attempting to evade accountability.
“Not a surprise that a man of hate — as John Catanzara has demonstrated over and over that he is — would run away from accountability,” Lightfoot said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The evidence of his guilt was overwhelming as set forth in the hearing, and he clearly sought to avoid the eventual reckoning by resigning, under investigation, and then divesting the Police Board of jurisdiction.”
On Oct 18, Catanzara released a video urging officers to resist Chicago’s vaccine mandate. In May, the union president also issued a unanimous vote of no confidence for Lightfoot.
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Catanzara has been a contentious figure in the Chicago law enforcement community for several years. Several complaints have been filed against him by civilians, alleging Catanzara “has made posts on social media calling for the murder of college students, defamatory statements against those participating in social programs, and stated that officers should not attempt to chase offenders.”
Catanzara was not the only police union president to resign in recent months. Ed Mullins, the president of the New York Police Department’s Sergeants Benevolent Association, resigned on Oct. 6 after the FBI raided his house and the union’s office. Mullins had leaked the arrest records of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter Chiara de Blasio after she was arrested during the George Floyd protests in June 2020.
The city of Chicago did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
