CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — At Monday’s hearing to determine the fate of his job as a Chicago police officer, John Catanzara stated on the record that he plans to retire from his position with the Chicago Police Department and run for mayor.
Calling the Chicago Police Board hearing nonsense, Catanzara, who joined the department in 1995 and was elected in May 2020 as president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, said he's submitting his retirement paperwork Tuesday morning.
"This was never giving the mayor the ability to ever said she fired me," Catanzara said.
The announcement came after the first day of a hearing that the city's attorney said is about an officer who violated the rules of conduct in order to bring attention to himself and "thumbed his nose" at superior officers and department directives.
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But Catanzara’s attorneys presented him as a “classic whistleblower” whose complaints about high-ranking officers have fallen on deaf ears. While they conceded that his social media posts were at times “vulgar” and “unsettling,” his lawyers insisted his words were “protected First Amendment speech.”
The fiery union leader, who has most recently clashed with Mayor Lori Lightfoot over her vaccine mandate, faced hours of cross-examination, and his lawyers announced that he had planned to present his own closing arguments.
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Catanzara said he knew once he was elected to the union post, he wasn't going to be allowed to serve, so he's ready to move on.
"And focus on our membership and taking this mayor out of office," he said.
In light of the announcement, the Chicago Police Board said it will hold a status hearing at 11 a.m. and if Catanzara does retire, the hearing will stop since the board will no longer have jurisdiction.
The status hearing is open to the public. Dial 408-418-9388, enter access code 962 181 026# to listen to the status hearing.
As he left Monday evening, Catanzara said he was serious about retiring and plans to run for mayor.
“I’m running against the mayor to change this damn city and the direction it’s on,” he told reporters. “Because she is literally not steering it into an iceberg, she is literally telling them full steam ahead. So something’s gotta change and apparently nobody else seems too concerned about it, so we’ll see where we go from here.”
Catanzara previously teased a mayoral campaign in a YouTube video last month, flashing a poster that signaled his intention to run in 2023.
A mayoral spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Catanzara later told the Sun-Times he plans to stay on as head of the union that represents over 17,000 current and former rank-and-file officers. The union’s bylaws allow for elected positions to be held by retired cops who are collecting their pensions.
(WBBM Newsradio and the Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this copy.)