The head of the FBI in Chicago and city’s Mayor Richard Daley got into a little tiff this past week.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Robert Grant, head of the Chicago FBI, shot back at the mayor who suggested the agency wasn’t doing enough to combat gun violence in the Windy City.
“My task force, which are FBI and Chicago Police officers side by side, are very demoralized to read those comments after all the hard work they put in,” Grant told WFLD-Channel 32 news, according to the Sun-Times.
His remarks were in response to Daley’s comments on Thursday after a joint FBI-Chicago Police bust resulted in 25 arrests, the paper reported.
“Well, finally. Thank God, they did it. Where have they been?” Daley said at the time, according to the paper. “The Chicago Police round ’em up every day, every week and every month. You give ’em no publicity for that. And they solve crimes in the community. We don’t wait for the feds.”
Grant shot back that the FBI has been busting folks for guns “for a long time. If he ever wanted to know the stats and see how much we have done … and see what actually goes on in the city in terms of sharing data and prioritizing, he might learn something.”
Then came the back peddling.
Daley’s press office apologized, the Sun-Times reported, saying the mayor “responded emotionally because three Chicago Police officers have been killed in two months. Mayor Daley did not mean to demoralize FBI agents and he looks forward to working with them again to clean up the city’s streets.”
