Sacked Chicago police chief Eddie Johnson ‘had been drinking with female member of his security detail for hours’ before he was found asleep at the wheel – Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, fired Johnson for ‘repeatedly lying’ about the incident
‘Chicago mayor fires Police Supt. Eddie Johnson for ‘repeatedly lying”
Sources say former Chicago police chief Eddie Johnson ‘had been drinking with female member of his security detail for hours before’ he was found asleep at the wheel in Oct
On October 17, he was found asleep at the wheel of his car at around 12.30am
Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired 59-year-old Eddie Johnson on Monday for ‘lying’ about the incident
He’d told police that he was on his way home from a dinner and had pulled over because he felt tired after not taking his medication properly
He later told the mayor that he’d had a ‘few drinks’ at dinner that night, was tired, and had missed taking his medication which mixed with his medication
Lightfoot says now that was a lie but she will not say where he had been or what he had done
Instead she said on Monday, surveillance footage proved Johnson had been deliberately misleading
Sources say the father-of-three who is married to a police lieutenant had been out drinking with a female member of his security staff before the incident
The top cop was sensationally fired on Monday just a few weeks shy of his scheduled retirement by the city’s new mayor.
She furiously told a press conference that he had lied about ‘having a few drinks with dinner’ on October 17, when he was found asleep in his car at 12.30am, and accused him of ‘ethical lapses’ but would not give any detail about what the lapses were, in order to protect Johnson’s 43-year-old wife Nakia and his three kids.
CBS Boston reported on Monday night that Johnson had been drinking with a woman who was not his wife before he was found in his car.
The Chicago Sun Times reports that the woman was an unnamed, female member of his security detail who he drank with for ‘hours’ at restaurant housed in the Chicago Board of Trade building.
Johnson had already announced plans to retire at the end of the year, but mayor Lightfoot was visibly furious as she announced that she was firing him, for cause, four weeks early.
“A lie is a lie,” said Lightfoot at a Monday morning news conference.
“He told me something that happened that night that turned out to be fundamentally different than what he portrayed to me and what he portrayed to members of the public.”
The mayor said a city Inspector General’s report and video evidence from the investigation make it clear Johnson lied about the circumstances of the incident.
But the mayor would not go into specifics Monday morning about what Johnson lied about.
“I think out of deference to his wife and his children, it’s not my narrative to tell, it’s not my story to tell,” she said.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Monday that she had fired Police chief Johnson ‘Fpr cause’. She accused him of ‘repeatedly lying’
Johnson flanked by his wife Nikea [right, in police uniform], her 10-year-old son [front], his son Daniel [directly behind him], other family members appear with Mayor Lightfoot [left] at a press conference on November 7 to announce his retirement
Johnson, a 31-year veteran of the force, was found asleep behind the wheel of his car on October 17 at 12.30am after a member of the public called 911.
He later blamed his drowsiness on a mix-up with medication he was taking and said he had had a ‘few’ drinks at dinner. Johnson subsequently announced he would be retiring in December.
But after conducting an investigation into the incident which included reviewing surveillance footage of the night in question, Mayor Lightfoot said it was clear he lied about the incident.
She refused to say how, saying she wanted to protect his wife and three children, but said it amounted to conduct that was ‘unbecoming’ of his position.
The mayor’s office will not say whether or not the decision impacts Johnson’s pension.
CBS reports that he will not lose it unless he is convicted of a felony, which he has not been.
It rounds off a tumultuous year for Johnson, who is being sued by actor Jussie Smollett for alleging that he faked a racist attack on himself on January 29.
The police officer who responded did not test to see if he was sober, and he drove home after being woken up.
Afterwards, he told reporters that he normally would have had his driver with him but that he’d given him the night off after a long day of work.
He said he felt he had to pull over because he was tired and that he was meant to have taken medication but hadn’t.
‘How can I explain it? It’s just your body kind of gives you a warning with the high blood pressure thing that you may pass out, so I pulled over, stopped and I just rested myself until that feeling passed,’ he said.
Now, he mayor debunks that account as a lie. – Lightfoot said Johnson intentionally misled her when they personally discussed the incident, and also lied to the public when he held a press conference several hours after it happened.
“He was not caught off-guard, and he had plenty of time to choose his words, and the choice he made was to communicate a narrative replete with false statements, all seemingly intended to hide the true nature of his conduct from the evening before,” she said.
She however refused to get into the details of the Inspector General’s report on the incident, saying: ‘I will not comment today on specific details.
‘At some point, the report may become public. I do not feel that it’s appropriate for his wife or children to do so at this time.’
Johnson was sworn in as the chief of police in 2012. He is yet to comment on the decision.
The father-of-three and his current wife police Lt. Nikea Kenner tied the knot after he recovered from a kidney transplant from his son, Daniel.
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