New top cop to shift detectives from North Side to West Side

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Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson plans to move detectives closer to the neighborhoods where murders have skyrocketed this year, officials say. | File photo

Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson plans to move detectives from the North Side to the West Side to put them closer to the neighborhoods where murders have skyrocketed this year, officials said Wednesday.

The plan is to shift violent crimes detectives from Area North headquarters at Belmont and Western to the police facility at Harrison and Kedzie, said Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the police department.

Murders in the Harrison District have spiked from six a year ago to 26 through April 10. And murders have risen from three killings to 11 in the Austin District on the West Side.

Yet only two people have been murdered in the neighborhoods where Area North is located.

The Harrison District is more than five miles away from the Area North headquarters, a 20-minute drive without traffic.

The plan is to improve detectives’ response times to the scenes of murders and shootings, Guglielmi said.

“It’s such a distance to commute to the areas where we are seeing the violence in Area North,” he said.

Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) embraced the move, saying detectives need to be closer to witnesses on the West Side.

It’s difficult to persuade witnesses to drive from the West Side to the Area North headquarters to speak to detectives, Ervin said.

“I literally spent an hour and a half taking a witness in the Shamiya Adams case up there,” said Ervin, who represents the West Side.

Shamiya, 11, was killed as she was about to make s’mores at a sleepover with friends in East Garfield Park when a stray bullet struck her in the head in 2014, police say. A teenage gang member was charged with firing the errant shot as he allegedly gunned for a rival.

North Side Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) didn’t comment on the proposal, saying he wasn’t briefed on it.

Tunney represents the Lake View neighborhood, where residents have been concerned about a loss of officers and their supervisors since 2012 when the Town Hall and Belmont police districts merged.

“I have been adamant about replenishing those resources on an incremental basis,” Tunney said. “I have been assured that we will not lose resources.”

In addition to the Harrison, Austin and Town Hall districts, Area North detectives investigate crimes in the Shakespeare, Jefferson Park, Albany Park and Grand Central districts on the Northwest Side and the Lincoln and Rogers Park districts on the North Side.

The proposed changes are the result of recommendations from Johnson’s command staff, Guglielmi said.

“We are trying to figure out how to do this logistically,” he said.

Detectives told the Chicago Sun-Times they expect to be moved as early as Monday, but Guglielmi said a start date has not been set.

Hundreds of detectives are headquartered at Belmont and Western. Guglielmi said he’s uncertain how many will be transferred to the West Side facility.

The last major reconfiguration of the detective division came under former Supt. Garry McCarthy, who consolidated five area detective headquarters into three: Area North, Area Central and Area South.

Detectives were moved out of both the Harrison and Grand Central facilities. At the time, many of those detectives grumbled about being moved to stations far away from the murders and shootings they were investigating on the West Side, where most of the violence occurs in Area North.

That 2012 consolidation was part of a move designed to save the city $11 million, officials said at the time.

Under McCarthy, the department also closed the Prairie District at 300 E. 29th, the Belmont District at 2542 W. Belmont and the Wood District at 937 N. Wood, shrinking the number of districts from 25 to 22. Patrol officers were absorbed into nearby stations.

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