Chicago police cancel one regular day off for cops, reportedly bracing for Rittenhouse verdict
CHICAGO - The Chicago Police Department says they have canceled one regular day off for all city officers this upcoming weekend to "enhance public safety and to address current crime patterns."
However, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, citing a video posted to YouTube by Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara, that the reason for canceling the one regular day off is the city is bracing for the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
Catanzara is accusing the city of violating an agreement in which officers must be provided notice before days off are canceled, the Sun-Times reports.
"…this is a clear violation," Catanzara said in a video posted to YouTube. "There was no notice. They do not get to just keep saying, ‘We need manpower just in case, you know, a verdict doesn’t go positive’ and, all of a sudden, there’s upheaval. That’s not the way this department needs to be ran. But that’s what happens when you put a hack in charge of doing the mayor’s bidding in the second spot. And you all know who I’m talking about. It just doesn’t stop with this guy. He is such a pathetic leader. I don’t even know how he looks himself in the mirror."
Catanzara is referring to First Deputy Police Supt. Eric Carter, according to the Sun-Times.
The trial of Rittenhouse is ongoing. The 18-year-old is accused of shooting three people — two fatally — during unrest in Kenosha in August of 2020.
On Tuesday, prosecutors rested their murder case after 5 1/2 days of testimony that was aimed at portraying Rittenhouse as the aggressor but often bolstered the teen’s claim of self-defense. His lawyers have suggested he was afraid his gun would be taken away and used against him.
The defense then began presenting its side, calling as its first witnesses people who were on the streets with Rittenhouse that night and described him as pale, shaking, sweating and stammering after the shootings.
"He repeats, ‘I just shot someone’ over and over, and I believe at some point he said he had to shoot someone," testified Nicholas Smith, who said he had gone to the protests that shook Kenosha that night at the request of the owners of a car dealership to protect the business.
"My god, my life might be over," another witness, JoAnn Fiedler, quoted Rittenhouse as saying. She said he didn't give any details about what happened but told her he "had to do it."
The former police youth cadet from Antioch, Illinois, was 17 when he went to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from the damaging protests that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer.