A City Council committee voted Monday to require the Chicago Police Department to conduct yet another staffing analysis to determine how to best deploy its dwindling ranks after similar studies were effectively scrapped.
In pushing for the workforce allocation study, Ald. Matt Martin (47th) cited the need to respond more quickly to 911 calls, close the gap between response times in different police districts and comply with a federal consent decree that mandates such analyses on a regular basis.
Similar studies, commissioned in 2016 and 2019, weren’t completed, and preliminary results weren’t made public.
This time will be different, Martin said. He argued Chicagoans “deserve more transparency on how decisions are made.”
“We’ve been talking about it in fits and starts. It’s time to do it,” he said, noting workforce allocation studies in San Francisco, San Diego and Houston are “updated at least annually” with results used to make adjustments.
Martin estimated the study would cost $800,000 to $1 million, but told his colleagues “philanthropic partners are willing to step up and fund” the review “at no additional cost to the city.”
The ordinance approved Monday would give the police department 90 days to identify a “qualified third party” to conduct a “comprehensive staffing analysis.”
That would include “department-wide staffing levels and workforce allocation analysis in every department bureau and unit at every rank, including sworn and civilian members, to help ensure the department has sufficient staffing and efficient workforce allocation.”
The police department would be required to provide “quarterly updates” on the progress of that study to the mayor, the full Council and the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability starting in May and continuing to February 2025.
A written report would be required within a year, with a joint committee meeting 30 days after that public release.
The analysis “shall develop a data-driven allocation methodology inclusive of the requirements” of the federal consent decree “that shall be used moving forward to adjust department staffing at least once a year no later than April 1,” the ordinance states.
Staffing remains a highly charged political issue in Chicago, with alderpersons fighting over limited police resources as shifting crime patterns lead to an outcry about armed robberies and violence in neighborhoods across the city.
Meanwhile, lagging recruitment and a high attrition rate remain pressing concerns.
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) asked if there will be “clear direction” about what the study will measure and how to create a baseline for how to deploy officers.
“I just don’t want us to get a product that’s useless,” Ervin said. “That we really can’t do anything with because we haven’t laid out the parameters of which we have some common thinking on or common goals for.”
Martin noted the consent decree has staffing benchmarks, but the court order doesn’t “get too prescriptive” about how to respond to specific crime markers.
He advocated making the initial staffing study and its annual updates public “to take those points into account” to determine “how we want to have CPD prioritize that within the model.”
Ald. Silvana Tavares (23rd) was the only member of the Police and Fire Committee to vote down the ordinance brought by Martin. Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th), a former firefighter, missed the vote, but later in the meeting said he didn’t support the measure.
Last February, the University of Chicago Crime Lab released a summary of the workforce allocation study it was tapped to conduct under former Chicago Police Supt. David Brown in 2019. The Crime Lab created a model that sought to deploy officers more equitably, enabling them to spend 60% of their time answering 911 calls and the other 40% doing other tasks.
“Too often, officers aren’t available when and where they’re most urgently needed,” the summary stated. “This inequitable distribution has real consequences, as we can see in our own home city of Chicago.”
The full, pro bono analysis ultimately wasn’t released to the public, and its findings weren’t implemented by the department. However, the Crime Lab’s model could potentially be updated and adapted to help complete the new staffing analysis.
By August 2021, the Crime Lab had already called for reassigning veteran and rookie officers immediately, based on the formula it created that includes calls for service, total violent crime in an area, population size and attrition of retiring officers, sources have said.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Brown chose a slower approach, saying high-crime districts would get more manpower only as rookies graduate from the academy and complete their 18-month probation.
It took about two years to get South and West side police districts — where shootings and drug-dealing are worst — the staffing they need.
After the department scuttled the previous staffing studies, Martin said Chicago residents and policymakers are left with a limited understanding of the police department’s deployment decisions and “the ideal ways that officers should be spending their time.”
“Many of us here appreciate that some public safety planning information is sensitive and should remain private,” he said. “But I also believe that members of the public and our body deserve more transparency around how staffing decisions are made.”
