BY FRAN SPIELMAN
City Hall Reporter
fspielman@suntimes.com
May 24, 2012 2:04PM
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald meets a media to plead his preference to step down from bureau Thursday, May 24, 2012. | Rich Hein~Sun-Times
Updated: May 24, 2012 5:52PM
Departing U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald “set a bar” when it comes to fighting corruption, though his inheritor should be equally endangered about going after gangs, guns and drugs, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pronounced Thursday.
“While a lot of a coverage has focused on traffic with open corruption, that we determine with — that is because we upheld ethics laws and have been really organisation about a mandate of operative in open use — right now, I’m operative in Springfield perplexing to pass a RICO law to use opposite a gang-bangers on a streets,” Emanuel said. “A U.S. profession that’s a partner with a state’s profession and with a Chicago Police Department assisting us quarrel gangs, assisting us quarrel guns and gun trafficking is also an essential thing on a going-forward basis,” he said. “Not that Patrick Fitzgerald and a U.S. attorney’s bureau haven’t, though we need a U.S. profession and an bureau that’s a full partner in fighting a gangs and guns that are on a street.” Asked either that meant he felt Fitzgerald hadn’t been a “full partner” in those pursuits, Emanuel said, “I didn’t contend that. we didn’t contend that.” Emanuel said, in fact, that he called Fitzgerald on Wednesday, after a sovereign prosecutor announced his resignation, and “congratulated him on his time in open service.” He added, “Obviously, he has set a bar” for his successors. Emanuel’s remarks were suggestive of complaints that former Mayor Richard M. Daley done during times. Fitzgerald’s bureau of crime tied to a Hired Truck, city employing and minority constrictive scandals led to dozens of convictions, including those of Daley’s former clientele arch and streets and sanitation commissioner. But Daley publicly complained that a sovereign prosecutor should be equally endangered about fighting gangs, guns and drugs. At a news discussion Thursday, Fitzgerald done a indicate to contend that a distance of a squad and narcotics sections of a U.S. attorney’s bureau had doubled on his watch, now accounting for 25 percent of a office’s 168 sovereign prosecutors. And scarcely 4 pages of a outline of accomplishments distributed by Fitzgerald’s bureau were clinging to narcotics and squad prosecutions that snared high-ranking members of several travel gangs.