Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was only weeks away from retirement after a 30-year career with the department when police found him asleep in a running car at a residential stop sign near his home last year.
Bodycam footage released Tuesday shows Chicago police officers ask for Johnson’s identification and he appears to flash a badge which is when the cops walk away without bothering to perform a sobriety test.
“You just sitting here or you wanna go home?” the officer asks Johnson in the video dated October 17, 2019.
“I’m good,” Johnson replies.
“You good? All right, sir. Have a good night,” the officer responds before walking away.
Johnson later claimed he passed out after failing to take his blood pressure medicine.
“Someone asleep in a car doesn’t mean they’re impaired,” he was quoted as saying.
But then a video surfaced showing him sitting at the bar with another woman downing several drinks over a span of several hours. He and the woman were kissing. The woman was not his wife. That led to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot firing Johnson in December.
According to the Chicago Tribune:
Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired police Superintendent Eddie Johnson effective immediately Monday for intentionally misleading her and the public about his conduct when he was found asleep in his running vehicle at a stop sign after a late weeknight out in October.
“This moment needs to be a turning point for the Chicago Police Department and the way things are done in this city,” said Lightfoot, emphasizing that a “culture change” must take place.
The stunning announcement came just weeks after Lightfoot held what she referred to Monday as “a celebratory press conference” to announce Johnson’s retirement by year’s end after about 3½ years at the helm.
Sources told the Chicago Tribune that the city inspector general’s office, which has been investigating the October incident, obtained video footage showing Johnson drinking for a few hours on the evening of Oct. 16 with a woman who was not his wife at the Ceres Cafe, a popular restaurant and bar at the Chicago Board of Trade building.
Later that night, when officers responded to a 911 call near Johnson’s home in the Bridgeport neighborhood about 12:30 a.m. Oct. 17, Johnson rolled down the window on his police vehicle partway, flashed his superintendent’s badge and drove off, sources said.
Despite Johnson’s termination, the 59-year-old former cop is receiving a pension of $15,800-a-month which he will receive for the rest of his life. Watch the video above. The video of him sitting at the bar with the other woman has not been released.
