Emanuel May Put More Cops in High-Crime Areas
by DAN MIHALOPOULOS and HUNTER CLAUSS | Oct 27, 2011
Mayor Rahm Emanuel defended the Chicago Police Department’s deployment of officers Thursday but, without offering details of his plans, promised to consider concentrating more police personnel in neighborhoods plagued by violence.
“I’m not done … in looking to see if we need to put more officers where we have a crime problem,” the mayor said. “We have applied more resources to the areas that need them and we are not done.”
Emanuel’s comments came less than a week after the Chicago News Cooperative reported on previously secret assignment data for more than 10,000 sworn police department employees. The CNC’s analysis of the data showed that some relatively safe police districts have as many officers assigned to patrol them as areas with much higher rates of murder, rapes and other violent crimes.
Many of the districts with the highest rates of crimes per beat officer are on the South and West Sides, the CNC found.
The American Civil Liberties Union cited the CNC’s reporting extensively in a civil rights lawsuit against the city that it filed Thursday. The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, alleges that “the city’s deployment practices have a disproportionately adverse effect on people who live in minority neighborhoods.”
The ACLU suit also alleged that the police more frequently were delayed in responding to 911 calls in black and Hispanic neighborhoods than in predominantly white sections of Chicago. The Sun-Times reported last year that police districts on the North Side would lose beat officers to South Side and West Side districts if the city redeployed personnel based on the volume of 911 calls and backups for police service.
Since his inauguration in May, Emanuel said, he has redeployed 1,019 officers from desk jobs or specialized units to assignments “on the streets,” with an emphasis on boosting the number of beat officers in higher-crime districts.
“I understand that they brought the lawsuit, but, look, we are ahead of where we were on May 15,” Emanuel said, referring to the day before his swearing-in ceremony. “We’re not done applying our resources, be they both by holding commanders accountable or applying manpower.”
Emanuel did not offer details of how he might juggle the department’s use of its resources. But as a candidate and as mayor, he has rejected the notion of taking officers from safer districts, as many black aldermen long have sought.
And Emanuel has acknowledged that he would have fewer officers to shift around the city than in the past. The ranks of the police department have declined markedly in recent years, with attrition far outpacing hiring. Facing a budget deficit, Emanuel has proposed erasing more than 1,200 vacancies that have remained unfilled from the city’s budget books in 2012.
In their suit, ACLU officials said the deployment data obtained by the CNC reflects that Emanuel has not done nearly enough yet.
“Redeployment has not ameliorated the disparity between minority and white districts in the proportion of officers assigned to the districts, as measured by the number of violent crimes,” according to the suit, whose plaintiffs also included the Central Austin Neighborhood Association.
The CNC obtained deployment data from an anonymous police source. City officials have continued to decline to make the data public, saying its release would constitute a security risk.
Harvey Grossman, the legal director for the ACLU, said the lawsuit is an attempt to “bring sunshine” to the deployment of officers by forcing the city to explain its assignment strategy.
“This shouldn’t be a secret in the city,” he said. “We pay for those services. Everybody agrees that public perception is an incredibly important part of public safety. You can’t have a sense of safety if you don’t know how your officers are deployed.”
Serethea Reid, the president of the Central Austin Neighborhood Association, said many of her neighbors do not call the city’s 911 center because they doubt officers will show up.
“It is time to make response time equal across the city,” she said. “I’m sad every time that I read stories or hear comments about this issue where it’s described as taking police away from some other neighborhood.”
Some aldermen say they will grill Emanuel’s police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, on the subject of deployment when he appears this afternoon at a City Council budget hearing on the police department’s proposed 2012 budget.
“I’m not done … in looking to see if we need to put more officers where we have a crime problem,” the mayor said. “We have applied more resources to the areas that need them and we are not done.”
Emanuel’s comments came less than a week after the Chicago News Cooperative reported on previously secret assignment data for more than 10,000 sworn police department employees. The CNC’s analysis of the data showed that some relatively safe police districts have as many officers assigned to patrol them as areas with much higher rates of murder, rapes and other violent crimes.
Many of the districts with the highest rates of crimes per beat officer are on the South and West Sides, the CNC found.
The American Civil Liberties Union cited the CNC’s reporting extensively in a civil rights lawsuit against the city that it filed Thursday. The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, alleges that “the city’s deployment practices have a disproportionately adverse effect on people who live in minority neighborhoods.”
The ACLU suit also alleged that the police more frequently were delayed in responding to 911 calls in black and Hispanic neighborhoods than in predominantly white sections of Chicago. The Sun-Times reported last year that police districts on the North Side would lose beat officers to South Side and West Side districts if the city redeployed personnel based on the volume of 911 calls and backups for police service.
Since his inauguration in May, Emanuel said, he has redeployed 1,019 officers from desk jobs or specialized units to assignments “on the streets,” with an emphasis on boosting the number of beat officers in higher-crime districts.
“I understand that they brought the lawsuit, but, look, we are ahead of where we were on May 15,” Emanuel said, referring to the day before his swearing-in ceremony. “We’re not done applying our resources, be they both by holding commanders accountable or applying manpower.”
Emanuel did not offer details of how he might juggle the department’s use of its resources. But as a candidate and as mayor, he has rejected the notion of taking officers from safer districts, as many black aldermen long have sought.
And Emanuel has acknowledged that he would have fewer officers to shift around the city than in the past. The ranks of the police department have declined markedly in recent years, with attrition far outpacing hiring. Facing a budget deficit, Emanuel has proposed erasing more than 1,200 vacancies that have remained unfilled from the city’s budget books in 2012.
In their suit, ACLU officials said the deployment data obtained by the CNC reflects that Emanuel has not done nearly enough yet.
“Redeployment has not ameliorated the disparity between minority and white districts in the proportion of officers assigned to the districts, as measured by the number of violent crimes,” according to the suit, whose plaintiffs also included the Central Austin Neighborhood Association.
The CNC obtained deployment data from an anonymous police source. City officials have continued to decline to make the data public, saying its release would constitute a security risk.
Harvey Grossman, the legal director for the ACLU, said the lawsuit is an attempt to “bring sunshine” to the deployment of officers by forcing the city to explain its assignment strategy.
“This shouldn’t be a secret in the city,” he said. “We pay for those services. Everybody agrees that public perception is an incredibly important part of public safety. You can’t have a sense of safety if you don’t know how your officers are deployed.”
Serethea Reid, the president of the Central Austin Neighborhood Association, said many of her neighbors do not call the city’s 911 center because they doubt officers will show up.
“It is time to make response time equal across the city,” she said. “I’m sad every time that I read stories or hear comments about this issue where it’s described as taking police away from some other neighborhood.”
Some aldermen say they will grill Emanuel’s police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, on the subject of deployment when he appears this afternoon at a City Council budget hearing on the police department’s proposed 2012 budget.
