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Retired Black Cops Want Police Hiring Freeze While Feds Investigate CPD

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A group of retired African-American police officers has suggested the department hold off on any hiring, promotions, and other structural changes until the Justice Department completes its investigation of Chicago Police Department procedures.

"We want the department to cease all of these policy changes, all of these promotions, and allow the Department of Justice to take its course, but also given a fair opportunity to allow the superintendent – whoever he or she may be – to have the opportunity to reform the Chicago Police Department in a fair and respectable manner," retired Officer Richard Wooten said.

The Chicago Police Board has begun a search for a new superintendent, after Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired former Supt. Garry McCarthy earlier this month, and the Justice Department has started an investigation of the department's policies and practices in the use of force.

Wooten, who now heads Gathering Point Community Council, said he and other black former cops welcome the federal probe, and would offer their help in addressing the department's challenges.

He and other retired black police officers said the department should not continue with a hiring system they argue is unfair to African American candidates. They also said recent promotions should be rescinded.

"At this present time, when the Department of Justice is present, we see that the [Police] Department is still stacking the deck. They're still doing business as usual. Many of those individuals that was promoted have been linked in with the investigation of the Laquan McDonald case," he said.

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Dave McNaughton, the new Deputy Chief of the Bureau of Support Services, is listed in the police report on McDonald's shooting as being at the scene during the recovery of Officer Van Dyke's weapon and empty magazine after he shot the teen 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.

McNaughton also signed a Tactical Response Report where he checked a box that states, "I have concluded that the member's actions were in compliance with department procedures and directives."

McNaughton signed the report on Oct. 21, 2014 -- the day after the shooting.

Dash-cam video of Van Dyke's shooting of McDonald, a 17-year-old African American, does not correspond with officers' statements that the teen was acting aggressively before he was shot 16 times.

Another department veteran, Eugene Roy, was named as the Chicago Police Department's Chief of Detectives. At time of the McDonald shooting, as the Commander of Area Central's Bureau of Detectives, Roy's department was in charge of the investigation.

Standing outside Chicago Police Headquarters on Thursday, Wooten and other retired officers also offered ideas for better training police to work with minority communities, and repairing what they say is a broken system.

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