Interim Chicago Police Supt. Charlie Beck said he didn’t blink an eye when TMZ reported that Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter had been killed in a helicopter crash before Bryant’s wife and three surviving daughters had been notified.
It was par for the course in the celebrity-driven frenzy that Beck said he endured for 41 years in his rise to the top of the Los Angeles Police Department.
“If you put your hand in a rattlesnake’s cage, it bites you. Don’t blame the rattlesnake. That’s just the way they are,” Beck said.
“I went through Camp O.J. I can’t even explain that to you,” Beck said, referring to O.J Simpson’s arrest for the murders of his wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, that culminated in the celebrity trial of the century and a controversial acquittal.
“The world-wide crush of media across the street from the courthouse during the trial was incredible....Nobody had ever seen that before. I mean - satellite trucks lined up as far as you can see and reporters just going insane for any O.J. news.”
Beck was also a lieutenant during the low-speed chase of Simpson’s white Bronco. His unit got custody of Simpson’s SUV.
“The Bronco ends up going to the impound yard. … We went back to get it and it was picked clean. People had stolen everything off of it for a souvenir. Everything. It was insane,” he said.
Beck is the retired L.A. police chief whose arrival in Chicago was hastened by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to fire Police Supt. Eddie Johnson a month early.
She accused him of “lying” about the circumstances surrounding an embarrassing drinking-and-driving incident in mid-October.
On Thursday, Beck once again ruled himself out as a candidate for the permanent job because, as he put it, “I love my family.”
But he made it clear he prefers the Chicago media over the bloodhounds in L.A.
Beck noted that the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune agreed to hold a story about his massive re-organization of the Chicago Police Department until after he had told the troops at a Compstat meeting.
“I would never get the L.A. media to embargo anything. They were horrible about that,” he said.
“No matter what you did, if a celebrity got in the media, if you had anybody do anything silly, that always took the front-page.”
