Chicago Police Department Takes a Slow Approach to Officer Redeployment
While city alderman argue they need manpower now, the Chicago Police Superintendent takes a path of least resistance.
Landwebs
While Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown has begun laying the groundwork for redeploying police officers to the city’s highest crime areas, critics argue that his approach is a timid one and could take roughly two years to get South and West Side police districts — where shootings and drug dealing are worst — the levels of manpower they need, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. Meanwhile, a recently completed pro-bono study of police manpower by the University of Chicago called for a more radical approach that called for reassigning veterans and rookies immediately based on a formula that includes calls for service, total violent crime in the area, population size and attrition of retiring officers. It concluded CPD has the manpower now to staff high-crime districts at proper levels, even after a recent wave of retirements.
Sources said Brown favors a go-slow approach that amounts to the political path of least resistance. Ald. Jason Ervin, chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, said he’d prefer to see the long-awaited reallocation of police manpower accomplished more quickly to stop the gang violence plaguing the West Side. Anthony Beale, former chairman of the Council’s Committee on Public Safety, said Chicago’s violence requires a “massive reallocation” of officers immediately — not a go-slow approach. He said officers should be pulled from the specialized citywide units Brown created and be placed in districts permanently. Reallocating officers is a perennial issue in Chicago. One of the biggest hurdles to moving veterans from one district to another one is the union contract: based on seniority, cops have the ability to “bid out” of a district they don’t want to work in.
