Police chief steps down amid fallout from shooting
The bravery of Senator John McCain serves as a reminder how much the US has lost in the age of Donald Trump.
greatly appreciate the outpouring of support – unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I’ll be back soon, so stand by’’. John McCain, a giant of the US Senate and known the world over, tweeted this message on Thursday morning in the aftermath of news that he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer.
Irreverent as his nickname the ‘‘Maverick’’ would demand, McCain wasted no time getting back to policy, releasing a statement from his recovery bed criticising the Trump Administration for throwing in the towel on a CIA programme that arms rebels in Syria and for having no plan at all for the Middle East.
At a time in America when the presidency seems just a small step up from celebrity (just ask Kid Rock, or The Rock), where career politicians are derided as swamp monsters, where political discourse has coarsened to the point of contempt, and where the political divide is a chasm where the right and left can’t even agree on the same problems anymore (let alone the same solutions), John McCain serves as a reminder that politics – and politicians – can be honourable.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is not an obituary. I write this week simply to remind Americans, New Zealanders, and everyone else in between, that American heroes do exist, and that what made this country truly great – freedom of speech and dissent, public service for public service’s sake, and sacrifice to uphold ideas greater than yourself – has not disappeared overnight in the age of Trump.
McCain hasn’t lived a scandal-free life. To raised eyebrows, he divorced the mother of his three eldest children in 1980, the woman who had raised those children while he was a POW in Vietnam. He moved on to Cindy, an heiress whose family money helped launch his political career. Minneapolis police chief Janee Harteau has resigned at the request of the city’s mayor, who said she had lost confidence in the chief after last weekend’s fatal police shooting of an unarmed Australian woman who had called 911.
Harteau said yesterday: ‘‘I’ve decided I am willing to step aside to let a fresh set of leadership eyes see what more can be done for the MPD to be the very best it can be.’’
Mayor Betsy Hodges said she
And nor is that political career – now nearly 40 years in the making – untarnished. His 2008 pick for vicepresident, Sarah Palin, was more than the ‘‘unconventional’’ running mate he and his team had hoped for.
While Palin – a tax-cutting, straighttalking governor from Alaska – hit the ground running as a ‘‘hockey mom’’ many Americans could identify with, her inexperience weighed heavily on the ticket.
An infamous interview with Katie Couric in which Palin could neither identify a single newspaper or magazine she read nor a Supreme Court case she disagreed with, revealed that although Palin was a political natural, she was also a political liability.
Perhaps most telling about the McCain/Palin ticket is not that he chose her, or that he took the 2008 loss to Barack Obama so personally, but that to this day he has never said a negative word about Palin, despite her gaffes and setbacks as she descended from governor to political celebrity to political historical fact. asked for Harteau’s after assessing where needed to go.
‘‘It is clear that she has lost the confidence of the people of Minneapolis as well,’’ Hodges said. ‘‘For us to continue to transform policing – and community trust in policing – we need new leadership at MPD.’’
Hours later, Hodges was interrupted as she tried to elaborate on Harteau’s departure at a City Hall news conference. A few dozen protesters entered the room and demanded her resignation, chanting ‘‘Bye-bye Betsy’’ as they resignation the department
And McCain’s basic decency was on full display during the 2008 campaign, as far-right racism and birtherism threatened the campaign of his opponent, Barack Hussein Obama. McCain never gave in to the cynical, easy attacks, choosing instead to wage a war of ideas against the young Senator from Illinois.
McCain is the son and grandson (and namesake) of US navy admirals. Born into some privilege and certainly into great expectations, he distinguished himself as a navy pilot and a patriot who endured the unthinkable in service of his country. Shot down over Hanoi in 1967, he endured more than five years of brutal imprisonment, torture, and medical malfeasance at the hands of the North Vietnamese.
Americans of all stripes now wait and watch and cheer for the recovery of a man who represents to many how much we seem to have lost. And it is Palin’s words, on a stage in Minnesota in 2008 as she formally accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination, that mean as much as anything right now.
She lauded McCain as a ‘‘true profile in courage’’ and noted that ‘‘in politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change’’.
This giant of the Senate, this leader of men, is a principled fighter. And he’ll keep fighting. For his life, for his family, and for his country. And along the way, as he always has, he will serve as a much-needed reminder that true heroes still walk among us. waved signs that said ‘‘Messy Betsy’’ and ‘‘You are next.’’ Hodges eventually walked out as they surrounded her at the podium, but returned later to take questions from reporters.
She said she understood and shared the public’s frustrations but ‘‘I will not be resigning’’.
Harteau, who worked her way up from the bottom of the department to become the city’s first female, first openly gay and first Native American police chief, said she was proud of the work she had accomplished and had been honoured to serve as chief. But she said the shooting of 40-year-old Justine Damond by one of her officers and other incidents ‘‘have caused me to engage in deep reflection’’. She said she had to ‘‘put the communities we serve first’’ despite the department’s accomplishments under her leadership.
Harteau was out of the city on personal time for nearly a week following the shooting of Damond, a life coach and bride-to-be who was killed by an officer responding to her 911 call of a possible rape.
The state is investigating the shooting.
In her first remarks about the case on Friday, when she returned to work, Harteau defended the training of Mohamed Noor, the Somali-American officer who shot Damond, but was sharply critical of him.
Still, some city council members called for a change in leadership. Linea Palmisano, who represents the ward where Damond died, told fellow council members that she was ‘‘done with image control and crisis management’’ and that it was ‘‘time for action’’.
After Harteau’s resignation, said she was looking Palmisano forward to the start of changes that she felt the department needed to make.
Harteau had a rocky tenure in the top post and had become a political liability for Hodges. Their relationship was strained, particularly after the fatal shooting of 24-year-old Jamar Clark during a confrontation with two white police officers in 2015. The black man’s death, amid heightened tensions across the US, sparked protests citywide, including an 18-day occupation outside the police station on the city’s north side.