Former Chicago police chief blasts Black Lives Matter

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Sunday blamed the Black Lives Matter movement for causing a rise in violent crime around the country.

During a radio interview with John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York, McCarthy blamed protests against police brutality in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and Charlotte, N.C., for creating a “political atmosphere of anti-police sentiment.”

“So what’s happening, and this is ironic, is that a movement with the goal of saving black lives at this point is getting black lives taken, because 80 percent of our murder victims here in Chicago are male blacks,” McCarthy said. “Less than half of 1 percent of all the shootings in this city involve police officers shooting civilians.”

{mosads}McCarthy was fired last year amid an uproar over Chicago’s handling of the fatal police-involved shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old.

Dashcam video showed the teenager being shot more than a dozen times while walking away from officers. The officer involved in the shooting was later charged with first-degree murder.

McCarthy admitted that it was a “bad shooting” and that the officer should be punished, but argued that the uproar over police brutality is “hamstringing” law enforcement.

“We are very clearly going down the wrong path,” he said Sunday.

McCarthy added that he is “hopeful” that President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), will do more to empower police than President Obama’s Justice Department.

“I think the Trump election quite frankly is a reaction to that,” he said. “I think the people are tired of career politicians who’ve never really had a job telling us how we should think and how we should act.”