Mayor Lori Lightfoot defends insulting text messages to FOP president: ‘I don’t take back one word that I said’
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday defended sending a series of insulting text messages to Chicago FOP President John Catanzara in which she called him a “clown,” “fraud,” “cartoon character” and “liar,” saying the comments were justified because he supported President Donald Trump sending “troops” into the city.
At an unrelated news conference, Lightfoot acknowledged sending Catanzara the texts and said she sent them with the expectation that he would make them public.
“In the middle of everything that’s going on, in a craven political move, this man waved his hand to President Trump and invited him to bring federal troops into our city,” Lightfoot said. “Federal troops into our city, a la Portland. How is that responsible? How does that make sense? What he should be doing is focusing on the things that are actually important to his members.”
The FOP posted two copies of letters sent by Catanzara over the weekend, and neither uses the term “troops” nor “Portland.” But Catanzara did note the city’s crime problem and said Lightfoot is a “complete failure” in each of them.
Catanzara could not immediately be reached for comment.
Catanzara was elected to head the local FOP, which has thousands of members, earlier this year. From the time he started with the department in January 1995 through mid-2017, Catanzara amassed at least 35 complaints alleging misconduct, records obtained by the Tribune show.
But he rode a wave of controversy to popularity with fellow officers, including filing a complaint against then-Superintendent Eddie Johnson accusing him of breaking the law by allowing an anti-violence march to proceed in 2018 along the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Lightfoot said Wednesday she has tried to engage Catanzara “in a constructive way,” but he “refuses to do so because he’s more interested in trying to make himself a political figure, rather than to be a leader.”
“I don’t take back one word that I said, I absolutely wrote those words with the understanding that he would probably make them public,” Lightfoot added. “My characterization of him, I think is 100% accurate, he proves that every single day. I will not retreat when I see someone who’s craven, who is not constructive and is refusing to engage in productive dialogue. He defined himself as to who he is.”
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Lightfoot’s text messages to the FOP president mirror a July 2019 controversy in which she was heard on a hot mic referring to the union’s then-vice president, Patrick Murray, as an “FOP clown.”
As Murray approached the microphone available for people to speak during public comment, Lightfoot was overheard on the dais saying, “Back again. This is this FOP clown.”
She later acknowledged it was inappropriate for her “to say that out loud,” but wouldn’t apologize for the substance of the remark.
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