New police boss puts detectives where they’re needed most

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Right out of the box, Chicago’s new police superintendent made a good call by deciding to move violent crime detectives from the North Side to the West Side, where murders have spiked as much as 333 percent this year.

It’s a commonsense approach to a problem of rising West Side crime that, perhaps, a new superintendent from outside Chicago might not have considered – at least not on his first official day on the job.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday — the same day Eddie Johnson was sworn in as superintendent — that Johnson wants to transfer detectives from Area North headquarters at Belmont and Western to the police district station at Harrison and Kedzie.

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Harrison/Kedzie in East Garfield Park is smack in the center of serious, skyrocketing crime. The district saw 26 murders this year — a 333 percent increase over the same period last year.

But detectives who investigated those crimes were dispatched from Area North headquarters in Lakeview, more than five miles away.

Witnesses also have made that long haul to help solve West Side murders, with at least one needing an hour and a half for the trek.

That is not the way to build trust with a community — something the new Police Accountability Task Force says is sorely lacking in Chicago’s minority neighborhoods.

The district that houses Area North saw only two murders this year; two surrounding districts experienced none.

Yet some districts abutting Harrison/Kedzie have seen six, 11 and as many as 27 murders this year.

Clearly, numbers alone indicate this is a smart move.

In addition, Harrison/Kedzie used to also hold detectives as the former Area 4 headquarters. Returning homicide investigators to that location should not be that expensive.

Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) has been concerned about a loss of officers in Lakeview since former Supt. Garry McCarthy consolidated some area headquarters and district stations in 2012.

However, hundreds of detectives are located at Belmont and Western. Some should continue to be stationed there.

But citizens would be better served if the bulk of Area North’s detectives were closer to neighborhoods where murders are more frequent and skyrocketing.

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