Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday defended Chicago Deputy Police Superintendent Eric Carter's decision to rush slain officer Ella French's funeral procession by calling off a traditional honor guard and bagpipe salute despite friction between Lightfoot and the police department over French's killing at a time of police reform.
''Eric Carter made the right call. I support what he did, and I'm horrified that in this moment people are trying to savage him for whatever agenda or purposes,'' Lightfoot told reporters at a press conference.
''There was no official honor guard that night. There was — let me choose my words carefully — [a] well-meaning but not well-organized group that wanted to hijack the procession. Which would have meant that the family would have been delayed exponentially in getting to the morgue,'' the mayor added.
''Given the new restrictions that the new coroner has put in place, that wouldn't have been fair to them. ... So, a call was made under those circumstances to focus on the family.''
More than two dozen Chicago police officers turned their backs when greeted by Lightfoot on Saturday night at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where French's partner remains in critical condition.
Asked to address the protest, Lightfoot said: ''We are living in a time where people don't respect each other.
''Larger than that is this moment where people feel like it is their right to spew hatred at everyone that they don't agree with or make fun and mock, usually anonymously and cowardly from social media, not confronting somebody directly and talking to them, but using the power of the pen and the keyboard to just spew unbelievable hate,'' she said.
''So this is a larger question than what may have happened with 10 or 15 officers on Saturday night,'' she continued. ''It's why do we think it is OK for people to engage in such nasty, vicious talk, orally or worse, on social media, and then have it repeated by media as if it is fact and true.
''I think our media plays a very important role in our democracy, but you lose me, you lose me when it's a race to the bottom and it's all about the fight and it's all about the conflict,'' she said. ''I've got to tell you, some of the reporting I've seen this week is just sickening. We all need to ask ourselves what we can do better to show our people everywhere that we have the capacity to be human beings again.''