Daley picks FBI agent to lead Police Department Jody Weis, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from the Philadelphia bureau, will take over the Chicago Police Department. (Bloomberg photo Bradley C. Bower / May 8, 2007)
By Gary Washburn and Angela Rozas | Tribune staff reporters
12:20 PM CST, November 29, 2007
Mayor Richard Daley today named a veteran FBI boss to become the city's top cop, saying he was the best choice to repair trust in a Police Department beset by problems of corruption and brutality.
Daley introduced J.P. "Jody" Weis, the special agent in charge of the Philadelphia FBI office, at a news conference where he touted both the veteran agent's previous role in the Chicago FBI office and his work as an internal investigations supervisor who policed fellow agents' conduct.
Daley said Weis will bring a "new perspective" to the department. It is the first time in more than 40 years that the city will have a police superintendent chosen from outside its own ranks, and it comes on the heels of Daley naming a Los Angeles attorney to the agency that handles citizen complaints about police.
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Weis' thoughts on the job/Video
Daley, while emphasizing that only "a few or some" officers had abused their trust, said the department can't do its job unless residents "believe that every interaction they have with our officers will be safe and respectful."
Weis said the mayor told him the city must do more to fight crime but "made it just as clear . . . people's confidence in the department needs to be rebuilt."
Both Weis and Daley emphasized plans for the department to increase its outreach to "diverse" communities in the city, in what seemed to be a further acknowledgment of the growing distrust between police and residents in some neighborhoods.
Daley also announced that interim Police Supt. Dana Starks would become the new head of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, which is charged with investigating complaints of discrimination and enforcing the city's hate crime law.
Mark Donahue, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, said Weis's outsider status may prove difficult.
"I think the rank-and-file would have preferred someone from within the department, someone they could easily identify with," said Donahue, who added that some officers with ambitions of moving up in the department might leave, sensing a changing of the guard.
Weis, 49, was in the news earlier this year when he helped lead an undercover investigation that exposed an alleged terrorist plot to attack soldiers at the Army's Ft. Dix base in New Jersey. Six men -- who allegedly underwent firearms training, collected an arsenal and conducted surveillance at Ft. Dix and other Army installations -- were arrested in May.
"Today we dodged a bullet," Weis said at the time. "We may have dodged a lot of bullets."
But Weis was the subject of another type of notoriety in 2006 for his role in the case of a FBI whistle-blower who charged that the agency mishandled terrorism investigations during the 1990s and failed to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
At a time when Weis was second-in-command of the Office of Professional Responsibility in Washington in 2003, the FBI opened an internal investigation of the Chicago-based agent, Robert G. Wright Jr., according to a memo subsequently obtained by the Tribune.
Written by a subordinate in Weis' office, the memo quoted Weis and another top official as saying they would "take him out" after Wright appeared on television to air his criticism.
Asked about the allegation when he was appointed head of the Philadelphia office last year, Weis said he could not comment on the case because it involved a personnel matter, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Wright, who was suspended, ultimately won reinstatement by the Justice Department, although officials let a six-month unpaid suspension stand.
Assuming City Council approval, Weis would succeed Supt. Philip Cline, who retired earlier this year as pressure mounted on Daley and the Police Department. Six members of the Special Operations Section were facing criminal charges, snagged in an ongoing corruption investigation. Supt. Dana Starks subsequently announced plans to disband the controversial unit, some of whose members have been the subject of several complaints of brutality and other wrongdoing. On another front, four officers were charged in connection with off-duty beatings in two barroom incidents that were caught on videotape.As part of an effort to restore public trust, Daley recently overhauled the police Office of Professional Standards, which critics contend failed miserably in investigating civilian complaints against police.
In an unusual move, the mayor named an outsider, Ilana Rosenzweig of Los Angeles, to head the revamped agency.
In his selection of Weis, Daley is making a similar departure from years-long practice at City Hall.
The last non-Chicagoan to head the Police Department was O.W. Wilson, a highly respected criminologist from the University of California at Berkeley. That was in 1960, and the selection was by the current mayor's father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. Like his son, the elder Daley was faced with a scandal at the time. Eight officers from the old Summerdale police district were caught operating a burglary ring.
An earlier attempt to replace Cline misfired. The Chicago Police Board, which vets candidates, presented Daley with three recommended candidates in July, including two Chicago police veterans and a former New York City police commander. But apparently unhappy after interviewing the three finalists, Daley asked the board to continue its search in August.
Weis (pronounced "Weese"), 49, began his FBI career in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1985 after completing service as an ordinance disposal officer in the Army, according to his FBI biography. He subsequently was assigned to terrorism, narcotics and violent crimes investigations in Houston and served on a SWAT team and as a bomb technician. Weis was promoted to the FBI's Bomb Data Center in 1992, joining the violent crimes/fugitive unit two years later. Transferred to Phoenix in 1996, he supervised squads dealing with domestic terrorism, international terrorism and civil rights.
Weis was assistant field agent in charge of the Chicago office before going to FBI headquarters. An assignment as criminal special agent in charge in the Los Angeles field office preceded his stint in Philadelphia.
While in Philadelphia, the FBI's Art Crime Team recovered the original typewritten, hand-edited manuscript of "The Good Earth" by renowned American novelist Pearl Buck, which had been missing from the author's archives for more than four decades. And during his Los Angeles assignment, his agents recovered Renoir's "Young Parisians," one of three paintings stolen in a 2000 heist in Stockholm.
Tribune reporters David Heinzmann, Todd Lighty and Jeff Coen contributed to this report.
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