Chicago City Wire

Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown is facing calls for his resignation after repeatedly mispronouncing the name of fallen officer Ella French during a recent news conference.

“David Brown called Ella French Ella Fitzgerald,” reads a post to Twitter on the 16th and 17th District CPD Scammer page. “This guy needs to leave Chicago. He can’t even remember his own officer’s name. He doesn’t care about the officers. He cares about Lori and his second pension.”

Chicago Ald. Raymond Lopez has been even more critical in his assessment, recently tweeting “Can someone tell that mope her name is Ella French. Three times he said it wrong. Write it down if you can’t remember you fool.”

French, 29, in her third year on the force, died earlier this month when gunmen opened fire on her and two other members of the department's Community Safety Team as they were conducting a routine traffic stop. Her partner was also hit and was initially listed in critical condition at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Brown’s name flub came just days after Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made a similar gaffe in referring to French as “Ella Frank.”

Brothers Emonte and Eric Morgan are now being held without bond in connection with the shooting, while 29-year-old Jamel Danzy was recently released on $4,500 bond after being hit with federal firearms charges alleging he made a straw purchase of the semiautomatic weapon used in the attack on the officers.

Brown has publicly blasted Danzy’s release as an “outrage.”

"When I heard this afternoon that a federal judge had released the man who illegally purchased and then supplied the gun used to murder Officer Ella French, I could not believe it,"  he said in a statement. "This decision sets a dangerous precedent that straw purchasers like Danzy are not a danger to society, despite the fact that his alleged actions directly led to the murder of a Chicago Police Officer and left another in critical condition."

In rendering his order, U.S Magistrate Judge Jeffery Gilbert said he took the fact that Danzy has no prior criminal record and that he has a job as a Head Start teacher's aide in Indiana into consideration.

In a video recently posted to YouTube by ABC 7, Brown argued there’s plenty of blame to go around for the state’s out-of-control crime rate.

"There are too many violent offenders and too little consequences in our courts," he said. "There are too many illegal guns in our city and too little consequences in the courts. I would say the reason why we're seeing so many mass shootings, we have strong advocacy in the courts for offenders and very little for victims."

Brown’s outburst came following a deadly Fourth of July holiday weekend where more than 100 people were hit by gunfire across the city, at least 16 of them fatally, marking the most violent weekend of the year so far in the city.

"It's a violent crime wave in this country that has been going on, carried over from 2020," he said, arguing that homicides rates are likewise on the rise in New York, Los Angeles and Houston.

Brown’s theory about lenient bond guidelines has garnered the public support of Lightfoot, with the two further arguing that the situation has only been made worse by the COVID-9 crisis.

"Our criminal courts have been shut down for 15 months,” Lightfoot told ABC 7 News. “They need to reopen. And we need to see the wheels of justice moving for our victims and their families."