Chicago FOP Head to Retire after Disciplinary Hearing

John Catanzara officially retired from the Chicago Police Department on Tuesday, his attorney announced, one day after the embattled head of the city’s largest police union dramatically revealed his plans to leave the department in the midst of a disciplinary case and perhaps run for mayor.

Lawyer Tim Grace confirmed Catanzara’s departure at a status hearing of the Chicago Police Board, where the controversial union figure faced a hearing for allegations of making numerous inflammatory social media statements as well as naming high-ranking command staff in arrest reports. It effectively ended termination proceedings that were months in the planning and started Monday with an unapologetic Catanzara on the stand.

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“Your Honor, this morning at 9 a.m., Officer Catanzara presented himself to human resources and ... retired from his office as a police officer after 27 years,” Grace told hearing officer Lauren Freeman at the Tuesday hearing.

When the first day of an expected three-day hearing ended Monday, Catanzara abruptly announced he was resigning, calling the proceedings a “farce” and disparaging Mayor Lori Lightfoot and other officials. He has pledged to not only remain as head of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, but also run for mayor in 2023.

“There was never a possibility under God’s green earth that I was ever going to give this mayor the ability to utter the words, ‘I fired him,’ ” Catanzara told reporters Monday evening.

He added that he has no qualms about leading a police union after stepping down as an officer, saying that “the city has to deal with me” as Chicago’s FOP president.

Catanzara, elected by rank-and-file officers as their union head while he was under investigation, faced dozens of CPD rule violations connected to 18 allegations of inflammatory statements and the filing of false police reports. Investigators concluded those allegations had rendered him unable to be impartial in policing and also impeded the mission of the department.

The comments ranged from posting “Its (sic) seriously time to kill these (expletives)” after the shooting of a Wayne State University police officer left a suspect still at large to writing “Savages they all deserve a bullet,” in reference to a video of a woman being stoned, drawing the ire of Muslim and civil rights organizations across the U.S.

The allegedly false police reports were subject of a separate investigation by the department’s bureau of internal affairs, which alleged that Catanzara filed a questionable report against then-Superintendent Eddie Johnson in 2018 accusing him of breaking the law by participating in and allowing an anti-violence march on the Dan Ryan Expressway.

Catanzara then allegedly filed a second report against his former commander, Ronald Pontecore, after he ordered his staff to delete the Johnson report from the department’s computer system.

In explaining why he waited until the middle his disciplinary hearing to announce his retirement, Catanzara said he wanted to get his claims that Pontecore was “obstructing justice” on the record. Pontecore has not been accused of wrongdoing by the city.

After Catanzara’s Monday announcement, the Police Board, which considers the most serious charges against Chicago police officers and makes decision about punishment, issued the following statement:

“If Officer Catanzara resigns on November 16, the hearing on the charges before the Police Board will not continue. Once an officer resigns from the Chicago Police Department, under the Municipal Code the Police Board no longer has jurisdiction to take disciplinary action,” the statement read.

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