“He has become an issue, rather than dealing with the issue, and a distraction.” Chicago’s top cop was just fired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel amid the public outcry related to video of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald.

+ Does such a firing resolve (or even address) the bigger issues surrounding Chicago’s police department? As Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds us: “So grand is the scale of Chicago’s police brutality that the city has, over the past 10 years, paid out a half-billion dollars in settlement money to victims.”

+ MoJo: 10 things you should know about the killing of Laquan McDonald.