MarieGTP

On July 7, 2016, five police officers were shot and killed in Dallas during what had been a peaceful protest. Three days later, WTTW’s Carol Marin sat down with two retired Chicago officers — Richard Wooten and Brian Warner — for a thirteen-minute segment asking the question a lot of newsrooms were asking that week:

In 2011, Richard Wooten ran for 6th Ward alderman in Chicago. He lost. In 2015, he ran again. He lost again. In 2019, a third time. Lost. In 2023 — twelve years after the first attempt — he ran one more time. Out of eleven candidates, he finished second, forced a runoff, and took nearly

Two pieces of press, told separately, add up to one story that neither of them quite tells. In June 2016, the Chicago Sun-Times sat Richard Wooten down for its “Sunday Sitdown” feature — the kind of profile that runs after a retirement, warm and mostly forward-looking, about a newly retired officer stepping into community work.

On August 15, 2015, CBS Chicago ran a story about Richard Wooten with a headline that told you exactly what the reporters thought mattered that day: “Retiring Chicago Cop Not Done Making City Safe.” Twenty-three years on the job, and the coverage was already about what came next — the community work, the advocacy, the

In January 2017, CBS News’ 60 Minutes sat down with correspondent Bill Whitaker to report on a city in crisis — Chicago, rising violence, falling trust, and the officers caught in the middle of both. Richard Wooten was one of the voices they turned to. Twenty-three years on the Chicago Police Department will do that.