Chicago’s mayor to deliver major speech on city crime

CHICAGO Chicago’s police department plans to hire almost 1,000 officers over the next two years in a bid to combat a surge of violence in the third-largest USA city including more than 500 murders this year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Wednesday.

Emanuel, in his second term as mayor, has been trying to rebuild trust in his leadership, particularly after the 2014 death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times by a white police officer.

Chicago is struggling with a wave of violence that has included 509 murders in the city already this year, according to Chicago Police Department statistics, a 46 percent increase from last year.

“You give the kids of the city of Chicago a positive alternative with a caring adult, they’ll go the positive route”, Emanuel told reporters Wednesday.

Mayor Emanuel, who is expected to address police and violence Thursday, fired Johnson’s predecessor, Garry McCarthy, following the McDonald protests, and the agency that investigates police shootings faces an overhaul. And as the Chicago Tribune noted in May, Mr. Emanuel is one in a long line of mayors that have assented to police union demands for increasing protections from scrutiny, in exchange for less pressure on raising officers’ pay. This year alone, there have been more than 500 homicides – compared to 491 in all of 2015. Calling respect “a two-way street”, he said there’s no pass for people to taunt police or for officers to dismiss citizens who need help. The department now has about 12,500 officers; Johnson said vacancies will be filled on top of the new hires.

Some 516 of the new cops will be patrol officers, assigned mostly to troubled neighborhoods suffering high crime rates, but also, according to Johnson, going to other districts that have been understaffed throughout the city. “If you can raise $1 billion for a Star Wars museum, surely you can raise $1 billion to bring resources into our community”, said Pastor Greg Livingston, of the Coalition for a New Chicago.

The ranks of the Chicago Police Department are about to swell. “So we’re meeting it with a new response, which is more police, more technology, greater investment in mentoring, our summer jobs and our afterschool”.

The city of 2.7 million is struggling with chronic budget deficits, a big unfunded pension liability and falling credit ratings. The city has yet to say exactly what the hires will cost or how they will pay for it, but at least some of the money is expected to come from reduced overtime for current officers. Already his tenure has seen a property tax hike and the council approved new water and sewer tax increases earlier this month.

Solis, fellow Alderman Howard Brookins Jr. and others argue that whatever the hiring costs, it could be less than the $100 million paid in police overtime per year.

“If we want to stop the violence we need to find and arrest the people that are responsible”, he said.

“The causes of crime and intra-communal violence exist because of the conditions of poverty that Rahm Emanuel has exacerbated for Chicago”, Black Lives Matter Chicago said in a statement. Most said they support the concept, but some have concerns about how the cash-strapped city will pay for it.