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Mayor Lori Lightfoot along with city commissioners give an update on COVID-19 vaccination reporting for city workers, including Chicago police officers on Monday. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Out of 12,770 CPD employees, 4,543 had failed to report their vaccine status by the midnight Friday deadline. On Monday, employees who have defied the mandate were being called in by their supervisors and given one last chance to report their vaccine status on the city’s portal.

More than 35% of Chicago Police Department employees and 28% of the workforce in the Chicago Fire Department could face disciplinary action after defying Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s mandate to report their vaccination status.

The Chicago Police Department registered the lowest compliance rate of all city departments, with 64.4% providing their vaccination status to the city; the fire department was second-lowest, at 72%.

Of the 12,770 CPD employees, 4,543 failed to report their vaccine status by the midnight Friday deadline. The overwhelming majority are sworn officers, but the list includes a small percentage of civilians.

Of those who did follow orders, 6,894 reported being fully vaccinated, while 1,333 reported are not fully vaccinated — meaning either that they are not vaccinated at all or have received only the first shot of the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer vaccines.

The numbers were better, but not great either in the Chicago Fire Department. The overall compliance rate in CFD was 72.1%.

Of 4,907 firefighters, paramedics and a handful of civilian employees, 1,369 defied the mayor’s mandate to report their vaccine status on the city’s data portal.

Among those who did follow the reporting mandate, 2,974 reported being fully vaccinated while 564 were either not vaccinated at all or were not fully vaccinated.

Starting Monday, employees defying the mandate were being called in by their supervisors and given one last chance to report their vaccine status.

If they don’t, they will be sent home and placed on non-disciplinary, no-pay status in hopes they will change their minds after a few days without pay.

And if they still don’t change their minds?

“A department member — civilian or sworn — who disobeys a direct order by a supervisor to comply with the city of Chicago’s vaccination policy issued Oct. 8, 2021 will become the subject of a disciplinary investigation that could result in a penalty up to and including separation from the Chicago Police Department,” said an order from Tina Skahill, deputy director in the office of CPD Supt. David Brown.

“Furthermore, sworn members who retire while under a disciplinary investigation may be denied retirement credentials,” an order to the troops states.

During a late-afternoon news conference, Lightfoot said “a very small number” of officers are being stripped of their powers after getting one last chance to comply with the mandate to report their vaccine status.

The mayor reiterated she has “contingency plans that have been in place for quite some time” in case hundreds of police officers refuse the final offer and are placed on no-pay status. That plan already includes having canceled police days off.

But, she said, “The number of folks who are actually — after being given the opportunities and even a direct order — saying ‘no’ is very small. Very small. So, I’m not seeing — at least for this day — that there’s gonna be any disruption in our ability to keep our neighborhoods safe.”

Lightfoot acknowledged the need to “keep plugging away at this” but remains confident police officers will come around, particularly once they are, as she put it, “disabused of the misinformation” they’ve received from their union. Those who are not vaccinated must submit to twice-weekly testing “on their time on their dime,” she said.

“I think our young men and women in the Police Department are smarter than maybe they’ve been given credit for. They’re not gonna risk their careers by being insubordinate and having in their [personnel files] the fact that they defied a direct order of their supervisors,” the mayor said.

Mitch Dudek/Sun-Times
FOP President John Catanzara carries pizzas in to union members at Chicago Police Department headquarters on Monday who were still waiting for their turn to talk to the human resources department to address the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

A batch of about 50 police officers were the first group to make their way into the human resources office at police headquarters on Monday, where they were given their last opportunity to offer up their vaccine status.

As of about 6 p.m., only 32 of the 50 officers had been processed, and of those officers, about half chose not to comply, according to John Catanzara, president of Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents rank-and-file CPD officers.

Those officers refusing to comply were stripped of their police powers and handed over their police stars, hats and IDs and were put on no-pay status, Catanzara said.

“Do you have any idea of how pissed off every officer is that’s being forced to make this decision about their family’s financial well-being and their own personal mental (well-being)? I mean we’ve got officers who literally have had breakdowns already because of this decision they had to make,” Catanzara said Monday evening outside CPD headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave.

He cut short chatting with reporters to carry more than a dozen pizzas from nearby Freddies in to union members who were still waiting for their turn to talk to the human resources department.

Another group of officers was scheduled to make the same trip to human resources on Tuesday. As many as approximately 4,500 officers who hadn’t reported their vaccination status as of midnight Friday still needed to go through the process.

Catanzara’s message to them: “Hold the line. Follow your hearts. Do what you need to do.”

Catanzara said the police force could be down thousands of officers by the time the process plays out.

The FOP has argued the vaccine mandate is a subject of mandatory collective bargaining and accused the mayor of ignoring the police contract. The union has sued, seeking to force arbitration on the issue.

The mayor countered it is the FOP that played “rope-a-dope” with the city — by stalling negotiations on the vaccine mandate.

“We get what the game is,” Lightfoot said. “I don’t view this as Lightfoot against the FOP. … What this is is Lightfoot and all of these city commissioners saying, ‘We’re gonna stand up for public health and public safety and we’re gonna make sure that our workforce is as fully vaccinated as we possibly can be.”

Lightfoot was asked about the impact on already rock-bottom police morale.

“What I have concerns about is seeing more officers die needlessly of COVID-19. … We had four officers who passed away in 2020. Every single one of them from COVID-19. Every single one passed away before the vaccine was widely available,” she said.

At an online forum Monday, Ald. Chris Taliaferro, chairman of the City Council’s public safety committee and a former CPD officer, supported the mandate.

“If I’m going to ride in a car with any given officer … why not have some confidence to know that the officer that I’m working in this car with is vaccinated, or that the officer that is going to walk in someone’s house to handle a 911 call is vaccinated?” he said.

“We need those assurances, as we are dying and day in and day out, as a result of this virus.”

Most city departments reported compliance rates above 90%. The City Council was a somewhat surprising exception at 84.4%. Of 360 total Council employees, 56 did not report their vaccine status. Of that total, 289 Council employees reported being fully vaccinated; 15 were not.

Full compliance was reported by at least 12 departments: the mayor’s office; the Office of Inspector General; the Departments of Housing; Cultural Affairs and Special Events; Administrative Hearings; Human Resources; Procurement Services; the Mayors of People with Disabilities; the Commission on Human Relations; the Chicago Police Board; the Chicago Board of Ethics; and the License Appeals Commission.

The overall compliance rate for the city’s 31,483 employee workforce is just over 79.4%. That’s 25,015 responses.

Those responses to the city also would mean at least 54% of CPD personnel are vaccinated. That percentage could still climb if CPD employees refusing to report their vaccine status had a change of heart. Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) said it would be wrong to assume those officers aren’t vaccinated.

“A number of the officers that I’ve talked to, who did not want to go on to the data portal to disclose their vaccination status — they were all vaccinated. They weren’t trying to avoid it because they weren’t vaccinated. They just didn’t like the way this was approached,” Hopkins said at that same online forum Monday.

“They felt that this was yet one more condescending, insulting message that was delivered to them by someone who they do not respect or admire.”

The 64.2% compliance rate for CPD falls well short of Catanzara’s warning that Chicago could be forced to get by with a police force of “50% or less.”

Catanzara has urged his members not to report their vaccination status to the city and, instead, file forms exempting them from the vaccine, listing one of three potential reasons the union has insisted upon: religious, medical or conscientious objector.

Last week, the high-stakes standoff landed in court, with a judge doing what the mayor could not — temporarily silencing Catanzara.

Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan granted the city’s request for an injunction but only to the extent that Catanzara be precluded — at least until the next hearing, now set for Oct. 25 — from making any further YouTube videos or otherwise using social media platforms to encourage his members to defy the city’s mandate to report their vaccination status.

Catanzara soon took to the union’s YouTube channel to say the courts were trying to muzzle him. But he said he would comply and urged his members to “do what’s in their hearts and minds.”

At the end of the 50-second clip, the union boss took a jab at the city leaders for how it has implemented its policy. Then he raised a campaign sign that said “John Catanzara for mayor 2023.”

“Enough is enough,” he said before abruptly ending the video.

The mayor has accused the fiery FOP president of “trying to foment an illegal work stoppage or strike” that endangers Chicago. Catanzara has flatly denied it.

“This union never called for a strike or a job action. We told our officers to continue to go to work. It was the city that was threatening to lock out our officers for not complying with an improper directive,” Catanzara said Friday in a video posted to the union’s Facebook page.

Catanzara has maintained that City Hall acknowledged from the outset the vaccine mandate was a “subject of mandatory bargaining. … That is not in dispute, yet they have not done that.”

“So any sergeant, lieutenant, captain or above who gives you an order to go in that portal is not valid. You are able to refuse that order. They cannot order you to violate your collective bargaining rights. … They can take us to court all they want. We already are filing paperwork to dismiss that silly motion.”

Lightfoot stood her ground.

She noted that state law and the police contract prohibit Chicago police officers from striking and accused Catanzara of defying both in an attempt to “induce an insurrection.”

“It is an illegal strike. He is encouraging officers to be insubordinate, not to follow directives, and he is predicting a 50% drop-off in police forces,” the mayor said.

“This notion that individual officers get to be insubordinate as they pick and choose? We’re not having that. And if that’s the police department they want to be in, they should walk to another police department because that is not gonna happen in the city of Chicago.”

The FOP provided its members with a form to download in the event they are called in and ordered to report their vaccine status.

It states, “I have been given an invalid direct order…. to enter my personal and private information” in the city’s data portal in direct violation of “my collective bargaining rights under the contract” between the city and the FOP.

“The matter is subject to mandatory bargaining which has not concluded and, as such, compliance would diminish my rights involuntarily and permanently. I was instructed, if I did not comply with this invalid order, that I would be charged with insubordination and placed into a no-pay status…and possibly terminated,” the form states.

“Complying with this invalid order and the violation of my bargaining, constitutional and civil rights has further caused me severe anxiety by challenging both my religious and moral beliefs. I am, in fact, complying with this because I am being forced to do so under complete duress and threats of termination.”

Officers were advised to have the supervisor giving the direct order sign the form, to keep it for themselves and send a copy to the FOP.

Contributing: Frank Main, Sneha Dey

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A 22-year-old man was fatally shot October 18, 2021 in Roseland. | Adobe Stock Photo

The 22-year-old was near the sidewalk about 6:25 p.m. in the first block of West 113th Place when someone opened fire.

A 22-year-old man was shot to death Monday in Roseland on the Far South Side.

The man was near the sidewalk about 6:25 p.m. in the first block of West 113th Place when someone opened fire, Chicago police said.

He was shot in the back and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said. His name hasn’t been released.

No arrests were made.

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Nagy went 8-8 in 2019 and ’20 and is 3-3 to start ’21. | AP Photos

The Bears’ offense has plunged below where it was the last two seasons and ranks near the bottom of the NFL in most categories. Nagy knows it needs to be fixed, but it’s not clear he has the answers in his fourth season.

We’re doing this again.

All the promise and expectation of the offseason has evaporated for the Bears’ offense, and the team sits 30th in scoring at 16.3 points per game. Six weeks into the season, they’re one of four teams that still haven’t reached 100 points.

It’s their worst start, scoring-wise, under coach Matt Nagy. And considering how dismal the offense has been, that’s saying something.

Nagy is still searching for “the whys,” after he imagined something so much better during the summer. He believed he had a wealth of skill players, a trustworthy quarterback in veteran Andy Dalton and enough of an offensive line to make it all work.

Instead, he’s once again wasting a top-10 defense after losing 24-14 to the Packers and now hoping to keep up with the defending champion Buccaneers. Here’s a sampling of Nagy’s thoughts on the offense from Monday:

— “Scoring, for sure, is an emphasis.”

— “We’re not scoring enough.”

— “You need to score more — we understand that.”

The answers were mostly along those lines — vague and unsatisfying. There’s always a lot of talking about the problem during the week, but this is the third consecutive season of everyone seeing on Sundays that he doesn’t have the solution.

Nagy has mentioned a few times lately that it’s still early in the season, but it’s not that early anymore. From 1990 through ’20, teams that started 3-4 missed the playoffs 82% of the time, so this is usually deep enough into the schedule to tell whether the Bears are good.

It’s also not that early for Nagy, who has coached 56 games (counting playoffs) and failed to score more than 20 points in nearly half of them.

If it seemed during the last two seasons like it couldn’t possibly get any worse, that was naive. The Bears are last in yards per game, second-worst in passer rating and fifth-worst on third-down conversions. They and the Jaguars are the only teams that have yet to score 25 points in a game.

The one positive is that they’ve gotten traction in a power-running offense since coordinator Bill Lazor took over as play caller, though even that feels tenuous.

There have been concerns all along about the Bears’ offensive line, and Nagy has never been inclined to lean on the ground game. He set the franchise record for fewest rushes in a game in 2019, but it’s funny how the threat of being fired makes people more open-minded. The Bears also might struggle to keep that up as opponents decode their rushing attack or if they’re forced to try throwing their way back into a game.

“We all feel good about the identity, but now what else do we need to do to compliment that, and how are we going to get to that point?” he said. “We’re working through all that. And now we’ve got a big challenge ahead of us in Tampa Bay.”

The Bucs, by the way, allow the fewest yards rushing per game (54.8) and second-fewest per carry (3.4) in the NFL. They have controlled possession for an average of nearly 37 minutes over their last three games. In their recent wins over the Dolphins and Eagles, they were up 14 at halftime.

Nagy thinks the Bears’ answer to those issues is more explosive pass plays, which should be possible off play action. They’re last in the NFL with nine passes of 20 yards or more, and five of those came in the game against the lowly Lions. In half their games, the Bears haven’t gotten one.

“We are not getting as many as we probably want,” Nagy said.

Correct, again. But it’s long past time to do something about that, and as he said when he revealed that Lazor would be calling plays, everything still runs through him.

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LaSheena Weekly, mother of Carlton Weekly, who performed as FBG Duck, held a news conference with family and friends near the scene of her son’s fatal shooting in the first block of East Oak Street in the Gold Coast, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file

A federal prosecutor said Tacarlos “Los” Offerd purchased the vehicle used as the “lead car” in the Aug. 4, 2020, murder one week earlier. That vehicle was then returned to the dealership in the suburbs less than an hour after the deadly shooting, he said.

A federal judge ordered the detention Friday of one of five alleged members of the O-Block street gang accused in a racketeering indictment of last year’s broad-daylight Gold Coast murder of rapper FBG Duck, which a prosecutor said is “on video.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Julien said Tacarlos “Los” Offerd, 30, purchased the vehicle used as the “lead car” in the Aug. 4, 2020, murder one week earlier. That vehicle was then returned to the dealership in the suburbs about an hour after the deadly shooting, he said.

FBG Duck, whose real name was Carlton Weekly, was shot to death in the first block of East Oak Street as shoppers milled about. Julien said at least 38 shots were fired at the rapper, and two other people were also wounded.

The shooting occurred around 4:30 p.m., and Julien said Offerd’s car was returned to the dealership, about a 50-minute drive away, around 5:30 p.m.

Julien also said the car was seen on police POD cameras and license plate readers.

An indictment unsealed this week charged Offerd and four others with murder in aid of racketeering. Offerd’s co-defendants are Charles “C Murda” Liggins, 30; Kenneth “Kenny” Roberson, 28; Christopher “C Thang” Thomas, 22; and Marcus “Muwop” Smart, 22.

Offerd, Liggins, Thomas and Smart were arrested early Wednesday morning. Attorneys for Liggins, Thomas and Smart have said they’d likely seek their clients’ release at a later time. Roberson was already in the custody of the Cook County Department of Corrections.

If convicted of the murder charge, the men face a minimum of life in prison and a potential death sentence. They are also charged with assaulting the two unnamed victims as well as firearm offenses.

John Somerville, Offerd’s defense attorney, argued during Friday’s detention hearing that prosecutors had offered “no evidence” that Offerd was involved in the crime.

“Mr. Offerd bought a car,” Somerville said. “Some unknown person was in his car. Some unknown person may have driven downtown.”

But U.S. Magistrate Judge David Weisman, who ordered Offerd detained, noted that a grand jury had already found probable cause to charge Offerd and the others in an indictment.

Julien also told the judge it appeared Offerd had lied to court personnel about his residence and employment status.

Police have said FBG Duck made “derogatory statements toward deceased members of the Black Disciples” on social media, a possible motive for his fatal shooting in the heart of the luxury shopping district on Oak Street.

FBG Duck associated with a faction of the Gangster Disciples street gang called Jaro City, which was based near 62nd Street and Vernon Avenue in West Woodlawn, police said at the time. But on social media, he identified himself as a member of the Gangster Disciples faction called STL/EBT, which is in the same area and mostly friendly with Jaro City.

Police also said last year there was a “high threat level” in an ongoing conflict between those Gangster Disciples and the O-Block faction of the Black Disciples from the Parkway Gardens apartments near 63rd Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Drive.

Odee Perry, a member of a Black Disciples faction in Parkway Gardens, was shot to death in 2011, and the faction was dubbed O-Block in his honor. Perry’s killing sparked a series of retaliatory shootings — including the 2014 murder of Gakirah Barnes, who police say was a female gang assassin for a Gangster Disciples faction in the neighborhood.

FBG Duck was also affiliated with the Fly Boy Gang, a group of rappers.

According to a Chicago Sun-Times story in 2017, his brother Jermaine Robinson was a rapper who went by FBG Brick. He and a friend, Stanley Mack, were shot to death in Woodlawn in July 2017.

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Jerry McGhee died Sunday after he was shot June 19, 2021 in Roseland.

Jerry McGhee died Sunday after he was shot in the head June 19 in the 10500 block of South Perry Avenue.

A 64-year-old man died months after he was wounded in a shooting in Roseland on the South Side.

Jerry McGhee died Sunday after he was shot in the head months earlier in the 10500 block of South Perry Avenue, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

On June 19, McGhee and a 58-year-old man were in a domestic altercation when someone opened fire, Chicago police said. The other man was taken to the same hospital with a gunshot wound to his shoulder and his condition was stabilized.

An autopsy report released Monday said McGhee died of complications from a gunshot wound and ruled his death a homicide.

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Today’s update is a 5-minute read that will brief you on the day’s biggest stories.

Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.

This afternoon will be sunny with a high near 72. Tonight will be clear with a low around 50. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 71.

Top story

Pastors, community leaders help students at West Side school deal with the loss of one of their own

Stefano Esposito/Sun-Times
Community activists huddle and pray with a student Monday morning at Michele Clark Academic Prep High School on the West Side.

Tristan Smith hopes to some day play in the NBA, and he understands it will take a tremendous effort to make it.

What makes no sense to the 10th grader is how someone with a similar dream, who was putting in the work, could be gunned down — hers now only a what-might-have-been story.

“That’s crazy because you can put so much work in and put so much effort to reach your dream and get it cut short off of something like that,” Smith said.

Smith was among the dozens of students who streamed into Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School on the West Side Monday. About two dozen community activists, including pastor Ira Acree, greeted them, hoping to ease the pain of losing their classmate, Kierra Moore, who, family said, was destined to play in the WNBA.

The 16-year-old was shot and killed Oct. 14 while standing with a group of people in Lawndale, according to police, who said the gunfire came from gunmen in a black car around 11:30 p.m. in the 3100 block of West Polk Street.

Moore was hit several times and died at Mount Sinai Hospital. Family insisted that Moore was not with a group of people when she was killed. Moore was with her twin sister in a rideshare car that was blocked by another vehicle, her family has said.

Some students huddled with Acree and his group in prayer Monday. Others walked into school, appearing dazed — perhaps from the unwelcome spotlight or from trying to process the tragedy.

Read the full story from Stefano Esposito.

More news you need

A federal jury today convicted a onetime student at DePaul University of trying to help the Islamic State by providing computer software that would disseminate the terrorist group’s propaganda. Jurors came to the verdict after listening to roughly two weeks of evidence in the trial.

Cook County Democrats today officially rebuked Ald. Jim Gardiner and removed him from his party posts in response to “misogynistic, homophobic, and obscene language” in texts first published last month. Rachel Hinton has more on what the moves mean and where Gardiner stands now.

Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s 12-year run as Chicago’s top watchdog ended Friday. His final quarterly report includes a range of wrongdoing by city employees, including one who tried to sneak a firearm through an airport checkpoint.

Nea Gates never planned to get vaccinated, then she saw reports about pregnant women having severe and sometimes fatal cases of COVID-19. Gates, who is now set to be fully vaccinated weeks before her Dec. 18 due date, says her change of heart came in part because she thought about her unborn child.

A bright one

Fans revel in Sky’s first championship: ‘They’re at the helm of Chicago prominence’

Milton Jackson, decked out in Chicago Bears gear, sipped on his beer Sunday afternoon between cheers he started for the WNBA’s Chicago Sky with the other men sitting at his table in the corner of Fatpour Tap Works, a bar located a half-block from Wintrust Arena on the Near South Side, where the Sky were playing for the championship title.

“This is generating a great deal of energy… and they need to be recognized for what they’re doing,” Jackson said as he intently watched the final three minutes of Game 4 of the Sky’s championship series against the Phoenix Mercury.

As the Sky clawed back from a 14-point deficit in the second half, the cheers inside the bar got louder.

Madeline Kenney/Sun-Times
Once the trophy ceremony was over, Sky fans flooded the sidewalks around the Wintrust Arena. Some waved rally towels and banged noise makers while others screamed with excitement.

“Let’s f—-g go!” a man yelled when Kahleah Copper hit a layup to pull within three points of the Mercury.

One would’ve thought the Sky had won when Candace Parker hit a game-tying three with less than two minutes that sent the bar into a total frenzy, with strangers high-fiving one another. That excitement remained until the final buzzer.

“Oh my God, they did it,” a patron said after the Sky clinched their first title, winning 80-74.

Read Madeline Kenney’s full story from the post-championship celebrations here.

From the press box

The city will celebrate the Sky’s championship tomorrow with a party in Millennium Park, Mayor Lightfoot said during a radio appearance this morning. The mayor gave no other details about what the celebration will entail.
Our staff breaks down the Bears’ 24-14 loss to the Packers yesterday: Rick Morrissey on Aaron Rodgers saying what we’ve known all along, Jason Lieser on Khalil Herbert’s strong debut and Patrick Finley with three other takeaways from the game.
Eddie Jackson took a short-lived shot at Lance Briggs on social media after the former linebacker turned NBC Sports Chicago analyst criticized Jackson’s tackling in the Bears’ loss.

Your daily question ?

How did you celebrate the Sky becoming Chicago’s latest championship team?Send us an email at [email protected] and we might feature your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.

On Friday, we asked you: Have you ever reconnected with an old friend or long-lost loved one? How did it happen? Here’s what some of you said…

“My old girlfriend from my Air Force days back in ’92 and she’s now my wife. Found her on Facebook five years ago.” — Enoral Sacul

“Didn’t see him for 30-something years. Ended up together for nine years until he died.” — Sandy Tyszkiewicz

“Old classmates and teachers from high school. Old friends from summer camps I went to growing up. All were found on Facebook.” — Steve Price

“Yes, through FB. Each connection has been wonderful.” — Barbara Silverman

“Yes only to be disappointed again I will let my past stay there now.” — Karen Johnson

Thanks for reading the Chicago Sun-Times Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.

Sign up here to get the Afternoon Edition in your inbox every day.

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Jackie Kinney/ Marquee Sports Network

“As I began making calls around the league this summer, one name came up every time. And that was Carter Hawkins,” president Jed Hoyer said.

As president Jed Hoyer searched for the person who would take his old job as Cubs’ general manager, he wanted the candidate to be from outside the organization. Someone who could put a fresh set of eyes on the team’s situation and help give a more detailed eye to some of the Cubs’ deficiencies as the team looks to build toward contention again.

After interviews and narrowing down his search over the past few weeks, Hoyer identified Carter Hawkins as the person for the job. The team introduced Hawkins on Monday as its 16th GM in franchise history and taking over the position that had been vacated for nearly a year.

“You think about any plan, you start with the concept of where am I? And then you figure out, where do I want to go? Then you figure out how do you bridge the gap in terms of how do I get there? And those are the things that you want to implement? Right now, it’s at that “Where am I” stage.

“It really is getting to understand the organization, but finding out what processes are already in place, all of which have been very successful, obviously, 2016 can show us that. But really understanding those areas and figuring out where some of my experiences might be able to help.”

“As I began making calls around the league this summer, one name came up every time. And that was Carter Hawkins,” Hoyer said. “As we moved as we started talking on the phone during this process, and then as we moved to formal interviews, it became clear to me how he built such a sterling reputation.”

Hawkins, 37, got his start in Cleveland’s front office as an intern, working his way up the ranks, ultimately becoming their director of player development before becoming an assistant GM in 2016.

The Cubs made a flurry of trades last season as it moved three core players from its World Series roster in order to jumpstart their rebuild. Hawkins’ expertise in player development and talent evaluation will be beneficial as the Cubs continue to overhaul their roster.

“It is so easy to skip steps. It is so easy to take the path of least resistance. It is so easy to pull the plug on the process when you don’t get immediate results,” Hawkins said. “But I know that [a sound process] can happen here for two really good reasons. One, it has happened here. And two, it is happening here.

“What Jed and Theo [Epstein] put together roughly 10 years ago today has raised the bar in Chicago for baseball to an incredibly high level. The challenge is how do we raise it even further. And that is a difficult challenge but one I’m eager to take on with all the people I mentioned earlier.”

With Hawkins hired and the team’s front office now set, the real work begins for the Cubs ahead of what is expected to be a busy offseason on the North Side. The Cubs, who are coming off their first 90 loss season since 2014, have several holes to fill on the 26-man roster.

Despite the current deficiencies, Hoyer has been adamant that the team will not only have the means to spend “intelligently” this offseason and vows to compete next season. The team’s payroll for 2022 is currently $41 million, but the Cubs haven’t made any significant movement in free agency since signing starter Yu Darvish in 2018.

One of the benefits of being a GM of a major market team is the resources at one’s disposal. While Hawkins will have budgets that the front office in Cleveland didn’t, he emphasized the importance of not skipping steps in the Cubs’ process of building its next contender.

“It’s it’s easier said than done all the time, I think,” Hawkins said. “But I think the key to being disciplined in your processes is having great people that are invested in the vision where people are disciplined to their processes.

“We are being disciplined in our decisions and deliberate in our decisions. But that doesn’t mean not making decisions. That doesn’t mean inaction over action. Like we have to make decisions, we have to be always moving forward, always looking for the next thing, just be deliberate in that process.”

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