Full Cover Your Ass Mode

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is terrified in the wake of the deaths of Laquan McDonald and Tyshawn Lee, and he's trying to barricade himself in City Hall to hold out against the calls for his resignation by offering up anyone he can get his hands on.  First to go under the bus: Chicago's top cop.

Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has been fired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, sources said Tuesday. 

McCarthy was called into City Hall on Monday and when he left City Hall he still had a job. But overnight, the mayor called McCarthy to tell him he was out. 

Headlines from the Laquan McDonald controversy, as well those following the gang execution of Tyshawn Lee, had become too much, according to sources. 

McCarthy appeared “shell-shocked” by the news, sources said. 

But Chicago Police superintendents are like baseball managers and football coaches. They’re hired to be fired. Failure and crises are literally built into the job. When it comes, a head needs to roll. The sacrificial lamb inevitably is the man on top—even though he’s not responsible for the number of wins and losses. 

McCarthy is no different. He’s a fighter who firmly believed he had earned to right to decide when the timing was right to retire from the pressure-cooker job after surviving a serious heart attack more than a year ago. 

But, Emanuel didn’t give him that chance. Although Emanuel is fiercely loyal to his staff and hates the idea of creating political scapegoats, of serving up heads on platters, the pressure to get rid of McCarthy was coming from all sides. Ultimately, it became too intense for Emanuel to resist. 

The final straw appeared to be a front-page editorial in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times. That followed the Washington Post and nearly every black elected official in the Chicago area.

Expect more heads to roll.  Expect none of them to be Rahm's.