Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by Andy Boyle2022-07-15T11:30:00-05:00https://chicago.suntimes.com/authors/andy-boyle/rss2022-07-15T11:30:00-05:002022-07-18T13:05:38-05:00Chicago violent crime soared, but arrests fell to historic lows
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago police have made arrests in fewer and fewer crimes in recent years." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/02cebf0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+138/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FVYcV5Z7cSIc5mihAoph5QtEYhr8%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x2000%2F3000x2000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281590x980%3A1591x981%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23829211%2FWACKERHOMICIDE_042119_5.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/4bd0b1a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+138/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FVYcV5Z7cSIc5mihAoph5QtEYhr8%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x2000%2F3000x2000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281590x980%3A1591x981%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23829211%2FWACKERHOMICIDE_042119_5.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago police have made arrests in fewer and fewer crimes in recent years.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler LaRiviere / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<div class="LargeTextEnhancement">LaTanya Gordon thinks she knows who killed her sons.</div><p></p><p>Her eldest, 20-year-old Tyler “Ty Ty” Malden, was shot in the head and an arm on April 6, 2020, targeted in a drive-by attack in an alley in the 10000 block of South Torrence Avenue.</p><p>As rumors drifted through the neighborhood, Gordon says a young man began “bragging on Facebook that he did the murder.” </p><p>Her other son, 15-year-old Terrance “Munchie” Malden, joined a chorus of neighbors who spoke out about the man’s claims.</p><p>Months later, that July 10, Terrance was killed, struck in the back in a drive-by shooting in an alley in the 9800 block of South Hoxie Avenue, blocks from where his brother was slain.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/7/15/23219117/violent-crime-soared-arrests-historic-lows-chicago-police-department-north-lawndale" target="_blank" >In North Lawndale, one of city’s most violent neighborhoods, a lot of police stops, a lot of crime, fewer arrests</a>
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<p>Gordon thinks the person who claimed responsibility for Tyler’s killing had a hand in Terrance’s death, too. She says the man has been harassing the family, stealing a poster from Gordon’s front yard memorializing her sons, then posting a photo to Instagram showing him aiming at it with a handgun equipped with an extended magazine.</p><p>Gordon says it’s “frustrating to the utmost” that Chicago police detectives haven’t been able to make a case. Updates from detectives have been infrequent, she says, and it’s difficult to get them on the phone.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="LaTanya Gordon’s sons Tyler and Terrance Malden were killed about three months apart in 2020. No one has been arrested in either killing." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/99fcc7f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6000x3367+0+316/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FFHKfOv84E4s4KxMkjmU6UAAAs9c%3D%2F0x0%3A6000x4000%2F6000x4000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283000x2000%3A3001x2001%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828641%2Fmerlin_106765518.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e6968a9/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6000x3367+0+316/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FFHKfOv84E4s4KxMkjmU6UAAAs9c%3D%2F0x0%3A6000x4000%2F6000x4000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283000x2000%3A3001x2001%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828641%2Fmerlin_106765518.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>LaTanya Gordon’s sons Tyler and Terrance Malden were killed about three months apart in 2020. No one has been arrested in either killing.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Pat Nabong / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>“The only thing they can tell me is that it’s an open case. ‘We’re still waiting for witnesses to come forward,’ ” she says. “That’s it. That’s the end of the conversation. Oh, and, ‘I’m sorry that you had to deal with this and [your] loss.’ ”</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>In the years since Gordon’s sons were killed, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/1/3/22858995/chicago-violence-dangerous-murders-per-capita-2021-2020-surge-garfield-park-police-lori-lightfoot" target="_blank" >violent crime in Chicago has continued to surge </a>— and criminals are mostly getting away with it.</p><p>The police have made arrests in just 12% of crimes reported last year, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis. That’s the lowest level since at least 2001, the first year the <a class="Link" href="https://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Crimes-2001-to-Present/ijzp-q8t2/data" target="_blank" >data was made publicly available</a>. </p><p>The overall arrest rate peaked at nearly 31% in 2005 and has dropped steadily. </p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>The decline in arrests mirrors a drop in nearly every category of police officers’ activity tracked by the Chicago Police Department. The numbers of traffic stops, tickets and <a class="Link" href="https://informationportal.igchicago.org/dashboards/public-safety/investigatory-stop-reports/" target="_blank" >investigative stops</a> — in which pedestrians are patted down or searched by officers on the street — all have plummeted. The number of investigative stops dropped by more than half between 2019 and last year, falling from 155,000 citywide to 69,000.</p><p></p><p></p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>And fewer crimes overall are getting reported — by victims and by the police, who used to produce many crime reports themselves while patrolling their beats. </p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>The slowdown amounts to a pullback by police officers as the city has experienced its most violent years in decades, a rise also seen in other major U.S. cities during the coronavirus pandemic and in the wake of the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. </p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>Rank-and-file police who patrol the streets and even top brass say officers are doing less. </p><p>Even just the suggestion that this was the case was once controversial. Former <a class="Link" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/10/15/heres-the-fetal-police-quote-causing-grief-for-chicago-mayor-rahm-emanuel/" target="_blank" >Mayor Rahm Emanuel caused a minor scandal in 2014</a> when he told a gathering of big city police chiefs and Justice Department officials that cops had “gone fetal” in response to growing public scrutiny. </p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>John Catanzara, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, even says officers aren’t as active as they once were.</p><p>Contributing factors include:<br></p><ul><li id="Sj9ltE">The pandemic.</li><li id="HHEPXu">Dramatic shifts in strategy from the top.</li><li id="fm9crZ">Increased scrutiny of the police.</li><li id="rPXB6d">Cops saying they increasingly feel that making an arrest isn’t worth risking their lives, their jobs or becoming a viral news villain.</li></ul><p>There also was a plunge in the number of arrests for so-called index crimes, which include homicide, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated battery. </p><p>Officers made arrests in fewer than 6% of those crime categories that were reported last year, the lowest level since at least 2001, the Sun-Times analysis of Chicago police data found. The trend has continued this year, according to figures through early June. </p><p>For the early years covered by the data, arrest rates are higher for killings, shootings and sexual assaults because detectives have had more time to solve those cases. </p><p>Still, arrests typically are made in the month or year that a crime was committed, law enforcement officials say. The data analyzed by the Sun-Times doesn’t show when an arrest took place — whether it was in the year a crime was committed or later on.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p></p><h3>Cops admit pulling back</h3><p>In 2019, as the overall arrest rate continued to fall, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/1/31/18318067/judge-chicago-police-dept-will-be-monitored-under-historic-reform-plan" target="_blank" >City Hall agreed to a federal consent decree </a>aimed at overhauling the police department following the killing by a police officer of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014 on the Southwest Side.</p><p>The department has since made reforms aimed at changing how officers do their jobs, including<b> </b>a stricter vehicle pursuit policy and a new foot pursuit policy. </p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>Also, cops have been told to stop enforcing some low-level offenses, including the <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/11/26/22639255/dead-end-drug-arrests-drugs-possession-chicago" target="_blank" >possession of small amounts of marijuana,</a> which was legalized in Illinois as of the start of 2020. </p><p>But the number of arrests for possessing harder drugs, like heroin, also has fallen significantly. Those arrests peaked at 7,753 in 2001 but dropped last year to 929. </p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-floatRight>
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‘We can only support each other at the lowest ranks,’ says one officer. ‘And if that means going out there and not doing anything, then that means going out there and not doing anything.’
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<p>Current and former police officers — who agreed to speak on the condition they not be identified — say cops have been pulling back for other reasons. </p><p>A former commander says officers who regularly have had days off canceled are avoiding making some arrests because they don’t want to wind up in court during their time off.</p><p>A beat cop who patrols downtown says prosecutors’ high threshold for approving felony charges has made officers second-guess whether to engage “criminals with guns” — a sentiment the former commander echoes.</p><p>The beat cop says high-profile attacks on officers such as last August’s shooting in West Englewood that left <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/8/13/22622883/ella-french-slain-chicago-cop-remembered-mother" target="_blank" >Ella French</a> dead and her partner Carlos Yanez critically wounded — “make us take a step back and think: Who really cares about us at that point?</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>“We can only support each other at the lowest ranks,” the officer says. “And if that means going out there and not doing anything, then that means going out there and not doing anything.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago police officers at a graduation ceremony on Oct. 20, 2021." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e61d6d3/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+158/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FehT6hf5ANjH-RBaiXINAikKACjI%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x2000%2F3000x2000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x1000%3A1501x1001%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828911%2Fmerlin_101778559.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/d7d5251/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+158/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FehT6hf5ANjH-RBaiXINAikKACjI%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x2000%2F3000x2000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x1000%3A1501x1001%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828911%2Fmerlin_101778559.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago police officers at a promotion and graduation ceremony last Oct. 20.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Getty Images</p></div></div>
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</div><p>Rank-and-file officers, sergeants and detectives also say they feel they have a target on their backs. They point to the consent decree, which requires the city to reform its policing policies after the Justice Department found officers engaged in civil rights violations.</p><p>Veteran cops say they used to go out of their way to make arrests when they saw suspicious activity but that they’re less likely to now for fear of getting into trouble and being fired or even arrested.</p><p>“In the past, I might see a guy with a gun in his waistband, and I’d jump out and chase him,” one decorated officer says. “No way I’d do that now.”</p><p>If that same person were involved in a shooting, though, that officer says he would always take action.</p><p>But the data shows those fears largely are unfounded despite high-profile incidents of cops being punished or facing blowback for actions in the line of duty. As the number of arrests has declined, fewer officers have been fired or suspended for misconduct. </p><p>In 2012, 10 officers were fired, nine were suspended, and nine resigned while facing misconduct accusations. Last year, three officers were fired and one suspended, with four resigning under a cloud.</p><h3>‘A big trust issue’</h3><p>In the South Chicago Police District, where LaTanya Gordon’s sons were killed two years ago, the arrest rate fell by 64% between 2019 and 2021, the largest decrease in any district in that period. The rate has increased slightly this year as crime has risen significantly. </p><p>Gordon points to “this silence that the neighborhood gives,” noting that many people are afraid to help the cops “because they don’t want retaliation to knock on their door.”</p><p>“If it happens at your front door, wouldn’t you want someone to let your family members know what’s going on and get justice for your family member?” she says.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="LaTanya Gordon — whose sons Tyler and Terrance Malden were killed less than three months apart in 2020 —&nbsp;shows a pendant she says signifies her “broken heart.”" srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a233291/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4913x2757+0+259/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FKfzHSSoqXYzADS1RPcfJ6avJha8%3D%2F0x0%3A4913x3275%2F4913x3275%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282457x1638%3A2458x1639%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828711%2Fmerlin_106765586.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/d997cf8/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4913x2757+0+259/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FKfzHSSoqXYzADS1RPcfJ6avJha8%3D%2F0x0%3A4913x3275%2F4913x3275%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282457x1638%3A2458x1639%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828711%2Fmerlin_106765586.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>LaTanya Gordon — whose sons Tyler and Terrance Malden were killed less than three months apart in 2020 — shows a pendant she says signifies her “broken heart.”</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Pat Nabong / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>She says “quite a few people” have details about her sons’ fatal shootings — including information about the person she believes was involved. Detectives have dismissed it as “hearsay” and won’t move forward without witnesses, she says.</p><p>“It’s nothing that no one is trying to make up, but it’s something to which we have been hearing,” she says. “So, if seven or eight people are telling you this person’s name … wouldn’t you wanna know who this person is?”</p><p>James Sims, a program manager with Communities Partnering 4 Peace, an anti-violence group that works in the area, says the drop in arrests stems from “a big trust issue.”</p><p>Sims says police shootings have eroded the already-tenuous relationship between cops and the communities they serve. People have used Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy — CAPS — community policing meetings to raise concerns about what officers are doing, some voicing frustration that officers aren’t addressing “loitering and hanging out.”</p><p>Sims remembers the days of officers walking a beat, joining people at block parties and going door-to-door to check on community “elders,” saying that’s the type of outreach people want.</p><p>“They’ve gotta get back to where it used to be when you had officers engaging with people in the community,” he says. “You don’t even have that anymore. If you have more engagement, you have better solutions.” </p><h3>‘The Ferguson effect’</h3><p>Some studies have shown that, when police make fewer arrests and stops because of mandates from supervisors or increased oversight or even in the wake of an officer’s death, the number of low-level arrests tumble with no effect on violent crime — even when <a class="Link" href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4114411" target="_blank" >the drop in police activity is significant</a>. </p><p>When police pull back after a high-profile killing by officers, though, the number of serious crimes surge, according to Deepak Premkumar, a researcher who has studied links between policing scandals and crime. </p><p>“What comes through is that context matters, the context of this decline in police activity and arrests,” Premkumar says. “When there is a high-profile event, the community scrutiny increases, [police] activity drops.”</p><p>The phenomenon has become known as “The Ferguson Effect,” named for the St. Louis suburb where police pulled back and violence rose in 2014 after an officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. </p><p>The reasons include officers cutting back on their activity and community members becoming less likely to cooperate with police, Premkumar says. </p><p>A similar situation was seen in Baltimore in 2015 after officers were charged in the death of Freddie Gray, and in Chicago the same year after the release of video showing <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/2/3/22916093/jason-van-dyke-released-prison-laquan-mcdonald" target="_blank" >Officer Jason Van Dyke</a> fatally shooting McDonald, according to Premkumar, who made McDonald’s killing the focus of a study on the impact of high-profile police shootings on crime and policing. </p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/2/3/22916093/jason-van-dyke-released-prison-laquan-mcdonald" target="_blank" >Ex-Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke released from prison for murder of Laquan McDonald — to public outcry for him to be back behind bars</a>
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<p>The nationwide protests sparked by the killing of Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis cop in 2020 — amid pandemic lockdowns in many cities — could have had similar effects on police and community behavior across the country, according to Premkumar.</p><p>“There are so many factors related to the pandemic that could have led police to pull back and for crimes to increase,” Premkumar says. “But it’s entirely possible that the murder of George Floyd, the highest-profile [police killing] in U.S. history, played a role in increases in crime.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Demonstrators rallying on Pershing Road in Chicago on May 31, 2020, over George Floyd’s death." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/aadb910/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4928x2766+0+257/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FraP6E1oy4wiMJdIF3EP1hpAn1zQ%3D%2F0x0%3A4928x3280%2F4928x3280%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282464x1640%3A2465x1641%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828821%2Fmerlin_91413960.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b324a2d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4928x2766+0+257/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FraP6E1oy4wiMJdIF3EP1hpAn1zQ%3D%2F0x0%3A4928x3280%2F4928x3280%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282464x1640%3A2465x1641%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23828821%2Fmerlin_91413960.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Demonstrators rallying on Pershing Road in Chicago on May 31, 2020, over George Floyd’s death.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Victor Hilitski / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>Jens Ludwig, a director of the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago, says evidence suggests “public safety is more a function about the quality — rather than the quantity — of arrests.” </p><p>Ludwig says his research has found that making a great number of arrests for low-level misdemeanors, like weed possession, “has very little public safety benefit.” </p><p>But making more arrests in homicides and shootings “can have a substantial effect in reducing gun violence” because they can “head off cycles of retaliation” among friends and family who otherwise might “take things into their own hands,” fearing the justice system doesn’t hold shooters accountable, Ludwig says.</p><p>“The implication is that you can achieve public safety by doing a lot of arrests or achieve the same level of public safety by doing lots fewer arrests and thereby imposing much less harm on society created by the criminal justice system itself,” he says. “It seems to be differences in the quality of police department management and leadership that determines which set of outcomes you get.”</p><h3>Mayor: I don’t see a work stoppage</h3><p>Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police Supt. David Brown have said city officials <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/1/9/18383984/lori-lightfoot-candidate-for-mayor" target="_blank" >“cannot arrest our way out of”</a> the violence that disproportionately affects minority communities on the South Side and the West Side.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>But, in January, days after closing the books on the city’s deadliest year in a quarter-century, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2022/1/5/22869450/police-cpd-lori-lightfoot-david-brown-arrest-increase-crime-quota-demotion-clearance-rate-murder" target="_blank" >Lightfoot and Brown threatened to demote police supervisors</a> if they couldn’t boost the department’s flagging arrest numbers and get officers to engage more with city residents. </p><p>Police sources have said a new emphasis was then placed on comparing officer activity to 2019, the year Lightfoot took office.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>Members of tactical units — who respond to gunfire and gang disturbances — soon faced heightened scrutiny, and most of them were sent to work in beat cars. </p><p>Brown blamed their redeployment on staffing issues related to a surge in COVID-19 cases, though sources said it was based on officers’ performance.</p><p>In early February, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/2/2/22914667/cpd-reassigning-320-officers-push-to-boost-arrests-renewed-criticism-from-police-leaders" target="_blank" >more than 300 officers, including 211 from tactical teams, were reassigned</a> to patrol streets as the department struggled to bolster arrests and combat violence amid a hiring slowdown and a flood of retirements. </p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<p>The officers who were reassigned had the lowest number of arrests dating to last year, sources said.</p><p>At the time, a mayoral spokesman confirmed that tactical officers were being reassigned because they were “seriously under-performing.” </p><p>Lightfoot and Brown now decline to answer questions about the low arrest rate for major crimes. </p><p>In separate interviews, they say the police department has shifted from enforcing low-level offenses and tout what they see as more important measures of success, such as the record number of guns recovered last year.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Mayor Lori Lightfoot, standing alongside police Supt. David Brown at a news conference last summer, discusses federal aid to help address violence." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f97f3f1/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6939x3894+0+367/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FhxWoi7YD_UM-kVe13utSTWO_WrE%3D%2F0x0%3A6939x4628%2F6939x4628%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283470x2314%3A3471x2315%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23148414%2Fmerlin_99197802.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/04c2b94/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6939x3894+0+367/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FhxWoi7YD_UM-kVe13utSTWO_WrE%3D%2F0x0%3A6939x4628%2F6939x4628%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283470x2314%3A3471x2315%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23148414%2Fmerlin_99197802.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Mayor Lori Lightfoot, standing alongside police Supt. David Brown at a news conference last summer, discusses federal aid to help address violence.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>Brown says higher arrest rates in the past were a byproduct of a troubled era typified by “stopping and frisking and mass incarcerating people of color.</p><p>“I’ve been doing this 40 years, and the highest arrest rates in the ‘80s and ‘90s did not make us safer,” the superintendent says. “It was a flawed policing model.”</p><p>Lightfoot says officers are “still running towards danger” and not in any way shirking their duties or pulling back from making arrests. </p><p>“Is this a difficult time to be the police? No question,” she says. “Are there officers that are concerned about being that next viral video? No question. Is that a widespread sentiment, so it leads to the conclusion that you’re suggesting that it’s in effect a work stoppage? I’m not seeing that.”</p><p>It isn’t only the numbers of low-level offenses that have seen a drop. Arrest rates for robberies fell to 4.6% of all cases, half the 2001 level, and, for aggravated battery, the number plunged to 11.6% of cases from 21.4% in 2001.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>Ald. Ray Lopez (14th), one of Lightfoot’s fiercest critics, says the responsibility for the department’s low number of arrests falls on the mayor and the superintendent, who have “driven away officers” and caused “a personnel crisis within the department.” </p><p>Brown’s recent emphasis on officer wellness has been undercut by the department’s decision to routinely cancel cops’ days off, according to Lopez. “Overworked” cops are having a difficult time responding to 911 calls, frustrating people in communities across the city who are looking for help and ultimately leading to fewer arrests, says Lopez, who is one of several candidates seeking Lightfoot’s job in next year’s mayoral election.</p><p>Lopez, who has spoken out against gang crimes in his Brighton Park neighborhood, also says detectives have been sent to stand on corners in “high-profile areas just to provide bodies,” which he says is a misuse of valuable resources.</p><p>“Those detectives need to be solving crimes,” Lopez says. “They don’t need to be babysitting high-value targets. And that has also led us, our department, not being able to arrest the individuals, follow up on leads and find out who’s doing what in our neighborhoods.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th), announces he is running for mayor of Chicago during a news conference at The Plant in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side, Wednesday afternoon, April 6, 2022." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2e8d334/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4937x2771+0+261/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FFTZLccf7Zm67ZS-WwJ9gLQ_uxXo%3D%2F0x0%3A4937x3291%2F4937x3291%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282469x1646%3A2470x1647%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23829097%2Fmerlin_105029350.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/39dcebc/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4937x2771+0+261/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FFTZLccf7Zm67ZS-WwJ9gLQ_uxXo%3D%2F0x0%3A4937x3291%2F4937x3291%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282469x1646%3A2470x1647%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23829097%2Fmerlin_105029350.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th).</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p></p><h3>More detectives?</h3><p>As Chicago and other cities have seen arrest numbers plummet, one possible response that’s come up is: Hire more detectives. </p><p>The Chicago Police Department has about 180 homicide detectives and is aiming to increase that number to reflect a national standard of three to five murder cases per homicide detective, according to a police spokeswoman. </p><p>The total number of detectives — including homicide detectives and those who investigate theft and other less serious crimes — is about 1,085, not including supervisors, according to statistics posted on the city inspector general’s website. </p><p>Nationally, a bill in Congress would provide $1 billion a year over 10 years to hire more detectives to focus on murders and nonfatal shootings, along with improving technology available to investigators and helping the families of crime victims. </p><p>For now, Lopez says, cops are “unquestionably hesitating and slowing down.</p><p>“As fewer arrests are made, the legitimacy of law enforcement gets questioned in the eyes of the people, the less respect people have for law enforcement because they feel and, quite literally, see that you can get away with almost anything in this city right now and not get caught,” he says. “Refusal to recognize that fact only makes Chicago all the more dangerous.”<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/7/15/23216341/violent-crime-soared-arrests-historic-lows-chicago-police-department-david-brown-lori-lightfootTom SchubaAndy GrimmJesse HoweAndy Boyle2022-05-31T20:23:16.774-05:002022-06-01T08:00:40-05:00Lightfoot, top cop praise police efforts after most violent Memorial Day in 5 years
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago Police Supt. David Brown speaks about current state of the Joint Carjacking Operation Task Force with several police departments in and outside the cook county during a press conference at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications in Near West Side, Monday, Feb. 7, 2022.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<p>Two years after Mayor Lori Lightfoot slammed Chicago Police Supt. David Brown’s Memorial Day weekend strategy as “a fail,” she struck a different tone on Monday — even though the number of people shot was higher.</p><p>When shootings over the three-day stretch in 2020 left <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/5/26/21270626/chicago-police-stay-home-order-shootings-violence-memorial-day-brown-lightfoot" target="_blank" >10 dead and 39 others injured</a>, Lightfoot called it a “bloodbath” and held Brown personally accountable. </p><p>Yet after nine people were killed and 42 more were wounded this holiday weekend — the most shootings in five years — her office celebrated that Chicago “safely returned to a series of fantastic events that define summertime in our city.”</p><p>“Mayor Lightfoot’s goal is to make Chicago the safest big city in the country,” the spokesperson said. “While we are not there yet, Chicago has made and continues to make considerable progress in many communities most impacted by violence.”</p><p>During a news conference Tuesday, Brown touted that homicides have fallen by “more than 30%” in the city’s 15 most violent community areas — although a Sun-Times analysis shows the decrease is actually closer to 25%. That’s compared to last year, the deadliest in the city in a quarter-century.</p><p>Those target communities are being flooded with new resources as part of a costly “whole-of-government” initiative trumpeted by Lightfoot. However, some of those same areas were still the hardest hit by gun violence this weekend.</p><p>About half of those shot were on the West Side, most of them in a single police district, the 11th, where there were two mass shootings on Sunday. On the South Side, at least 23 people were shot.</p><p>Brown said most of the shootings that took place on the city’s South and West sides over the weekend were due to personal disagreements and petty arguments. But he insisted that placing the onus on police to resolve the “root causes” of violence isn’t fair.</p><p>“How do we resolve the root causes of violence? If that’s on police, you’re putting too high a burden on police to resolve poverty and mental health challenges and drug addiction,” Brown said. “What police can do, though, is take guns off the street.”</p><p>To that end, he announced that officers made 154 gun arrests over the weekend and recovered 250 firearms, 75 of which were seized on Monday. </p><p>“We race to take guns off the street because every gun, every single one taken off the street is a lifesaver, we believe,” he said. “It’s a deadly force situation avoided.”</p><p>He added: “Of what we can do, we did better than any other city in the country, which is take guns off the street to hopefully save lives.”</p><p>He also gave exceptional grades to the officers who worked over the weekend, some of whom had their days off canceled — a trend that has tanked morale in a department facing deep staffing issues.</p><p>“A for bravery. A for courage and commitment and dedication. Running toward danger, A-plus.”</p><p>The last time there was as many shootings as there were over the three-day weekend was in 2017, when 52 people were shot. In 2016, a historically violent year, 69 people were shot.<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/31/23149246/memorial-day-violence-lori-lightfoot-top-cop-cpd-police-department-cpd-shootings-murderKatie AnthonyTom SchubaAndy Boyle2022-05-29T07:05:03.563-05:002022-05-29T17:55:21-05:00Girl, 16, among 5 seriously wounded in Lawndale shootout after crowd gathered to mark anniversary of another teen’s killing
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago police investigate in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue, where a 16-year-old girl was among five people seriously wounded in a shooting early Sunday near Daniel Webster Elementary School in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/19eda4d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6348x3563+0+335/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2Fk3NwHlCX8LDJfidR0shmwrzMdfI%3D%2F0x0%3A6348x4232%2F6348x4232%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283174x2116%3A3175x2117%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23595216%2FKARLOV_052922_05.JPG 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e361b2e/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6348x3563+0+335/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2Fk3NwHlCX8LDJfidR0shmwrzMdfI%3D%2F0x0%3A6348x4232%2F6348x4232%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283174x2116%3A3175x2117%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23595216%2FKARLOV_052922_05.JPG 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago police investigate in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue, where a 16-year-old girl was among five people seriously wounded in a shooting early Sunday near Daniel Webster Elementary School in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
</figure>
<p>A 16-year-old girl was among five people seriously hurt in a shootout that erupted early Sunday after a crowd gathered near a Lawndale elementary school to mark the death of another teenager who was killed by gunfire two years earlier.</p><p>The wounded, ranging in age from 16 to 33, were on a sidewalk in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue around 1:30 a.m. when a fight gave way to the exchange of gunfire, Chicago police said.</p><p>Shell casings and at least 97 evidence markers could be seen scattered in the street and around the corner outside Daniel Webster Elementary School. A police source said three different types of bullets were used in the firefight, including a caliber used in AK-47s and other rifles.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago police investigate in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue, where a 16-year-old girl was among five people seriously wounded in a shooting early Sunday near Daniel Webster Elementary School in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/33daafa/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5728x3215+0+303/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FHogSoYtocCs0eDx8NKIwMWApCS0%3D%2F0x0%3A5728x3819%2F5728x3819%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282864x1910%3A2865x1911%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23595220%2FKARLOV_052922_01.JPG 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b8bbaf5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5728x3215+0+303/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FHogSoYtocCs0eDx8NKIwMWApCS0%3D%2F0x0%3A5728x3819%2F5728x3819%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282864x1910%3A2865x1911%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23595220%2FKARLOV_052922_01.JPG 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago police investigate in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue, where a 16-year-old girl was among five people seriously wounded in a shooting early Sunday near Daniel Webster Elementary School in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
</figure>
</div>
</div><p>The teenage girl was shot in the back, a man and woman, both 21, were shot in the left arm, and a 33-year-old man was shot in the face, officials said. They were all taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition.</p><p>A second 21-year-old man was shot in the left side of the body and taken to Stroger Hospital, also in serious condition, police said.</p><p>Sharon Tillman, a retired 63-year-old, said she was awoken by the incessant sound of gunfire. “It sounded like it had a switch or something because it kept going,” she said.</p><p>Though she’s lived on the block for much of her life, Tillman said shootings have become more common and have inched closer to home in recent years. She said the gunfight broke out during a “repast” commemorating the anniversary of the death of another gunshot victim named “Zara.”</p><p>A flyer advertising a “Zara Day” party on Saturday had been circulated on social media to mark the killing of Lazarra Daniels, an 18-year-old woman who was gunned down in nearby West Garfield Park as protests and looting roiled the city on May 31, 2020 — <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/8/21281998/chicago-deadliest-day-violence-murder-history-police-crime" target="_blank" >the single most violent day in Chicago in six decades</a>.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>Organizers of the party didn’t respond to requests for comment.</p><p>But a 44-year-old woman who lives in the neighborhood also noted the shooting happened during “a little celebration” around the anniversary of another attack. She said she’s becoming inured to the violence.</p><p>“It’s not something that you’re shocked about,” said the woman, a former state worker who declined to give her name. “We’ve been around here in this city long enough to know. ... Only thing you do is pray just to make sure nobody gets hurt and hope that nobody is dead.”</p><p>She blamed the number of guns flooding the streets and the lack of opportunities for young people to have a good time — issues that have come up in light of the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school last week and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s efforts to clamp down on young people causing trouble downtown.</p><p>“They have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and then you listen to … rap music and they think this is the thing,” she said. “I’ve done been around these kids and watched a lot of them grow up. They are good kids.”</p><p>She added: “We’ve gotta find something for them to do because this is what it’s gonna lead to. Because they don’t have no activity. Everything is shut down. Y’all shutting them down, and y’all trying to box them in. It’s not gonna work.”</p><p>As kids played around the corner, Kenya Evans worked the grill in her front yard and got ready for a Memorial Day get-together.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Kenya Evans grills burgers and ribs outside her home in Lawndale as she speaks about the increase in violence in her neighborhood, Sunday, May 29, 2022. In the early hours of the morning 5 people were shot after a fight broke out in front an elementary school a couple blocks from her home." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/518b625/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6122x3436+0+324/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FZLEj4NrLwda5TtIUi4oYZpa6cl4%3D%2F0x0%3A6122x4083%2F6122x4083%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283061x2042%3A3062x2043%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23595910%2Fmerlin_106106575.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/7006dc5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6122x3436+0+324/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FZLEj4NrLwda5TtIUi4oYZpa6cl4%3D%2F0x0%3A6122x4083%2F6122x4083%2Ffilters%3Afocal%283061x2042%3A3062x2043%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23595910%2Fmerlin_106106575.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Kenya Evans grills burgers and ribs outside her home in Lawndale as she speaks about the increase in violence in her neighborhood, Sunday, May 29, 2022. In the early hours of the morning five people were shot after a fight broke out in front an elementary school a couple blocks from her home.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>A longtime resident of the Near North Side, the 44-year-old said she moved to Lawndale only a couple years ago and treads lightly in her new neighborhood, checking the Citizen app for crime alerts and keeping close watch over her young family members.</p><p>Her fear isn’t misplaced. The West Garfield Park community area, which includes Lawndale, is the second-most violent in the city, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis. The area had seen 48 shooting or homicide victims so far this year through May 27, down 30% compared to last year and 29% compared from 2020.</p><p>Evans said she was at a party Saturday in her old neighborhood and hadn’t heard about the toll of the overnight shooting. But as she tended the grill, the specter of violence lingered like the smoke.</p><p>“It’s everywhere you go. Everywhere you go. As soon as it get hot, that’s what they do.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>A pamphlet asking for tips and information near the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue a day after a shooting nearby left five wounded, Sunday, May 29, 2022. </p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/29/23146188/girl-16-among-5-shot-and-seriously-wounded-after-fight-in-lawndaleMohammad SamraTom SchubaAndy Boyle2022-05-20T17:09:49.259-05:002022-05-24T17:31:52-05:00Near North Side shooting: 2 killed, 7 others wounded near McDonald’s in Chicago
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago police investigate at the scene where multiple people were shot Thursday night at Chicago Avenue and State Street." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a08a9d7/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+157/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FdJAKDL2hNVBF6KD7TkhLiC6GqTY%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x1998%2F3000x1998%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x999%3A1501x1000%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23576835%2FChicago_Shooting.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/dcda65c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+157/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FdJAKDL2hNVBF6KD7TkhLiC6GqTY%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x1998%2F3000x1998%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x999%3A1501x1000%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23576835%2FChicago_Shooting.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago police investigate at the scene where multiple people were shot Thursday night at Chicago Avenue and State Street.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<p>For the third time this week, Chicago’s top cop found himself on the defensive over gun violence Friday, this time over a mass shooting downtown that left two dead and seven injured.</p><p>The people were shot near a notorious trouble-spot at Chicago Avenue and State Street as two groups began fighting near a McDonald’s restaurant and someone opened fire into the crowd.</p><p>The attack occurred just a day after <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/19/23128318/cpd-police-shooting-cicero-austin" target="_blank" >Chicago police shot and seriously wounded an unarmed 13-year-old boy</a> during a chase in Austin, and less than a week after a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot during a fight in Millennium Park.</p><p>Shootings have been spiking downtown for much of the year. The 18th police district, where the McDonald’s is located, has logged the most homicides in 17 years and the most shootings since at least 2010.</p><p>“This is a gun-crime crisis,” Brown told reporters who pressed him on his strategy going into the summer, typically the most violent time in the city. ”We are awash in guns.”</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
<div class="RelatedList-title">Related</div>
<ul class="RelatedList-items">
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/19/23128318/cpd-police-shooting-cicero-austin" target="_blank" >Chicago’s top cop has few answers about how an unarmed 13-year-old boy was shot and seriously wounded by a Chicago police officer </a>
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<p>Brown was asked about a tweet from Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) complaining about the “daily excuses coming out of the superintendent’s office [that] insult intelligence & are infuriating.”</p><p>Reilly questioned Brown’s plan to assign fixed police posts at State and Chicago and on the CTA Red Line subway platform nearby in the wake of Thursday night’s attack. </p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
<div class="RelatedList-title">Related</div>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/20/23133356/millennium-park-shootout-gunfire-violence-police-guns-security-curfew-cook-county-sheriff" target="_blank" >Millennium Park shootout: Man, security guard exchange gunfire as more violence erupts at city’s premier downtown park</a>
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<p>“We were already supposed to have fixed posts in place at Chicago & State. So, huh?” the alderperson tweeted. “City Council needs to step in & demand accountability. Their strategy is failing us miserably.” </p><p>Brown declined to respond to the tweet, but Mayor Lori Lightfoot later backed up her superintendent, saying she agreed young people have been “fussing and fighting since the beginning of time,” and the only difference now is that too many of them are settling their differences with a gun.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago Police Department Supt. David Brown, joined by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, at the Legler Regional Library on Friday May 20, 2022." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f8ce608/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4648x2609+0+246/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2F078oZhPUwKJalIzBlz4IOhBQMH8%3D%2F0x0%3A4648x3099%2F4648x3099%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282324x1550%3A2325x1551%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23578348%2FCRIME_052122_Brown_Lightfoot.JPG 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/93488f4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4648x2609+0+246/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2F078oZhPUwKJalIzBlz4IOhBQMH8%3D%2F0x0%3A4648x3099%2F4648x3099%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282324x1550%3A2325x1551%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23578348%2FCRIME_052122_Brown_Lightfoot.JPG 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago Police Department Supt. David Brown, joined by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, spoke to reporters at the Legler Regional Library in the East Garfield Park neighborhood on Friday.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Pat Nabong/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>“There are many young people that I’ve sat with who tell me that they feel like they need a gun to feel safe,” Lightfoot said at an afternoon news conference with Brown at her side. “Frankly, that’s a horrible indictment on our failings as adults.”</p><p>As she did earlier in the week after the Millennium Park shooting, the mayor demanded that parents and guardians be “held accountable” for young people who are “clearly lost.”</p><p>“Parents, you’ve got to know where your kids are,” she said. “This is your responsibility, first and foremost. We’re going to do our part. But parents, guardians and caring adults in these children’s lives — they must absolutely step up. We will never solve this problem without that first line of defense. We won’t.”</p><p>She did not directly respond to Reilly’s tweet either, but like Brown, she insisted CPD strategies are not failing and actually helped make an arrest within minutes of the mass shooting.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago police at Chicago Avenue and State Street, where two people were killed and at least eight others wounded on Thursday, May 19, 2022." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/812c444/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+157/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FXwvOyqKfOsNSuDbZvh3S7Kq1TRk%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x1998%2F3000x1998%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x999%3A1501x1000%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23576701%2FCHICAGOMASSSHOOTING_052022_8.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e690897/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+157/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FXwvOyqKfOsNSuDbZvh3S7Kq1TRk%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x1998%2F3000x1998%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x999%3A1501x1000%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23576701%2FCHICAGOMASSSHOOTING_052022_8.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago police work the scene where two people were killed and at least eight others wounded at Chicago Avenue and State Street on the Near North Side,</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>“There were some roving posts and the officers were very close last night, which is how they were able to apprehend the shooter so quickly,” the mayor said. “But we’ve got to have a fixed post at that corner — Chicago and State — and we’ve got to have a fixed post inside that CTA Red Line ... I want these young people, if they’re coming downtown, I want them to be safe.”</p><p>Brown said one of the “roving posts” of officers was responding to the fight at McDonald’s when shots rang out around 10:40 p.m.</p><p>“Our officers waded into the crowd,” Brown said, then chased the gunman onto the Red Line subway platform and arrested him along with someone who tried to help him escape.</p><p>A gun was recovered, police said.</p><p>A third suspect being chased into the subway ended up on the tracks and suffered burns when she came into contact with the electrified third rail. She was stabilized at Stroger Hospital.</p><p>Charges against the three were still pending as Brown spoke.</p><p>The superintendent said the attack was recorded by a police surveillance camera. Two groups are arguing when someone can be seen handing the shooter a gun, Brown said. </p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago police officers at the scene of a mass shooting Chicago Avenue and State Street." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b38b566/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+157/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2Fbzi4TTNYzmOcvG17421qKzeEvUk%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x1998%2F3000x1998%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x999%3A1501x1000%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23576705%2FCHICAGOMASSSHOOTING_052022_9.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/facee60/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+157/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2Fbzi4TTNYzmOcvG17421qKzeEvUk%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x1998%2F3000x1998%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281500x999%3A1501x1000%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23576705%2FCHICAGOMASSSHOOTING_052022_9.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>A witness at the scene of a mass shooting near Chicago Avenue and State Street, said the shooting stemmed from a fight outside a nearby McDonald’s.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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</div><p>Five people were taken by ambulances to hospitals:</p><p>• A male with a gunshot wound to the chest, pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He was identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office as Antonio Wade, 30.</p><p>• A 31-year-old man, pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital. He was identified by the medical examiner’s office as Anthony Allen.</p><p>• A 17-year-old boy, taken to Stroger with multiple gunshot wounds.</p><p>• A 19-year-old man taken to Northwestern in critical condition with a gunshot wound to his chest.</p><p>• A 46-year-old woman shot in the leg and taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where she was stabilized. </p><p>Later, four men also hurt in the shooting showed up at Northwestern Memorial Hospital: a 31-year-old shot in the hand; a 21-year-old shot in the arm; a 30-year-old with two graze wounds; and a 29-year-old with one graze wound, police said. All were in good condition. </p><p>Police had initially said a total of 10 people were shot, but later changed that to 9. </p><p>Witnesses said the shooting stemmed from a fight outside the McDonald’s, and the chaotic scene quickly spilled into the nearby CTA Red Line station as police chased the suspects, stopping at least one train and evacuating passengers.</p><p>“When the fight first started, we were right next to them,” said Deonna Jackson, 18. “We had to run because I didn’t want anyone to swing on me. ... We were literally right there.”</p><p>She added: “The person that they jumped on, we were talking to the people he was with, which turned out to be some girls. ... We get to 7-Eleven, we turn around and they just get to shooting, to shooting like crazy.”</p><p>Tensions erupted among the crowd of onlookers, some yelling as officers blocked off the streets around the McDonald’s. Some in the crowd began fighting with each other and officers quickly moved in to break them up.</p><p>One person asked an officer why it had to be this way. “It doesn’t have to be,” the officer responded.</p><p>As the sun rose Friday, two people who said they knew one of the victims at Northwestern talked near a car where a woman, appearing distraught, spoke to someone on the phone.</p><p>“There’s nothing you can do or say to help us right now,” one of them said. Getting information from police and hospitals was difficult, he said: “These victims have mothers.”</p><p>About an hour later, the woman was seen leaving the hospital in tears. Three others sobbed and hugged each other near the hospital’s entrance.</p><div class="RichTextSidebarModule Enhancement" data-module data-align-floatRight><a class="AnchorLink" id="module-f40000" name="module-f40000"></a>
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</div><p>Back at the shooting scene, a few blocks from the hospital, morning commuters walked through blood, broken glass and other debris from the attack that remained on the sidewalks around the restaurant and subway stop.</p><p>“This is an ongoing crime scene that needs to be processed for evidence,” Brown said.</p><p>A reporter noted that commuters were navigating puddles of blood in an area that was not cordoned off by crime scene tape. “I stand by my response,” Brown said.</p><p>Later in the morning, the city’s Department of Buildings posted an “off limits” sign at the McDonald’s because of “dangerous and hazardous electrical conditions.” The statement did not elaborate.</p><p>The closure came despite comments at a morning news conference by Kenneth J. Meyer, head of the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, who said he didn’t want to overreact and yank the business license for the McDonald’s because it is open 24 hours a day and provides a food option for many nearby hospital employees working overnight shifts.</p><p>Lightfoot said inspectors found some “pretty serious electrical issues that need to be fixed” before the place can reopen.<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/19/23131980/chicago-mass-shooting-2022-near-north-side-mcdonaldsMohammad SamraMitch DudekAndy BoyleFran Spielman2022-05-10T12:36:17.273-05:002022-05-10T21:17:03-05:00Chicago violence drops in 2022: Fewer people shot, killed — but summer looms
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago police work the scene where a 59-year-old woman was killed and a 34-year-old man working security was injured in the 200 block of East 35th Street in The Gap neighborhood, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<p>Following Chicago’s deadliest year in decades, the number of people shot and killed in the 15 communities targeted in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s signature anti-violence plan has fallen by 26% ahead of the historically brutal summer months — a pivotal stretch in what she has described as a “make-or-break year” for lowering crime.</p><p>This year’s drop marks a promising trend and accounts for much of an overall citywide reduction in shootings and homicides, though the city has experienced jarring spates of violence when the weather has warmed. Lightfoot and members of her administration have nevertheless begun touting and taking credit for the downtick, which experts believe is premature.</p><p>Launched in the summer of 2020, the<a class="Link" href="https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/public-safety-and-violence-reduction/home/our-city-our-safety.html" target="_blank" > “Our City Our Safety” initiative</a> looks to flood the most dangerous communities with new resources, from violence intervention programs to help with jobs, housing and health. The mayor has framed it as an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to violence prevention, with the city taking cues from its COVID-19 response by pulling together various agencies and outside partners to deliver services.</p><p>Through May 8, the targeted communities on the South and West sides saw a 19% decline in homicides and a 28% drop in non-fatal shooting victims from the same time last year, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis. Across the city, those numbers have fallen 7% and 17% respectively, accounting for a 15% overall drop over the same period.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>But despite trending in the right direction, the toll is still far higher than in both 2019 and 2020. At least 901 people have been wounded by gun violence through May 8, 173 of them fatally. Seventeen more people have been killed by other means.</p><p>During a news conference last week, Lightfoot pointed to the improvement in the 15 priority areas as an example of the progress being made to address the pervasive violence that has grown into a serious political liability. Still, she acknowledged, “It’s not enough.”</p><p>In an interview, Lightfoot tied this year’s early improvements in the target areas to the influx of resources, a new beat-minded policing approach and improved community outreach, including tabletop exercises training residents to “respond to some kind of violence-related trauma” and efforts to gather intel on troubled blocks and buildings.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Mayor Lori Lightfoot, seen here in 2019, on Thursday announced a total of $11 million in funding available for local nonprofit arts organizations. " srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/baf2787/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4838x2715+0+457/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FsVW-UdRr__HB4_hhjdYqVAeBeeA%3D%2F0x0%3A4838x3629%2F4838x3629%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282419x1815%3A2420x1816%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F19118635%2FLightfoot_CTU.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/06ce301/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4838x2715+0+457/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FsVW-UdRr__HB4_hhjdYqVAeBeeA%3D%2F0x0%3A4838x3629%2F4838x3629%2Ffilters%3Afocal%282419x1815%3A2420x1816%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F19118635%2FLightfoot_CTU.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks at a news conference at Daniel Webster Elementary School on the West Side, Monday morning, Aug. 26, 2019.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file</p></div></div>
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</div><p>“When people feel like they’ve got some ownership, they’ve got data and they’ve got our attention and focus, it makes a huge difference,” she said. “And obviously the fact that we’re bringing what we call the whole of government approach, which is telling our city commissioners that their work has to be viewed from a violence reduction lens and really engaging with them and their senior staff.”</p><p>She added: “I think all these things are making a difference.”</p><h2>‘You can’t do anything about the weather’</h2><p>Tamara Mahal, who runs the city’s Community Safety Coordination Center that serves as a hub for the initiative, said her team is “cautiously optimistic about the results” so far this year. Yet crime experts doubted the plan has had any real impact. </p><p>A more simple explanation for the downtrend, according to Wesley Skogan, a Northwestern University professor who specializes in crime issues: The weather has been unseasonably crummy this year.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Wesley Skogan, an expert on crime who teaches at Northwestern University, said he believes the nasty weather in Chicago this year has contributed to a drop in shooting and homicide victimization.</p></figcaption></div>
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</div><p>Because shootings and homicides are typically committed in public, he said they’re more vulnerable to shifts in weather “than almost anything we track in the world of crime.” Indeed,<a class="Link" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7310019/#CR10" target="_blank" > a study published in 2020 by researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities</a> found that between 2012 and 2016 “shootings in Chicago were more likely to happen on warm days and especially during the weekend or holidays.”</p><p>Until this week, the Chicago area had been particularly dreary over the first four months of the year, recording more precipitation and lower temperatures than on average, according to the National Weather Service.</p><p>When temperatures rose into the 80s during one weekend last month, Skogan noted there was “a horrific round of shootings.” Then on Monday, as temperatures jumped again, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/10/23064928/14-shot-2-fatally-monday-in-chicago" target="_blank" >at least 12 people were shot across the city, two of them fatally</a>.</p><p>“Weather is one of the most reliable predictors of crime,” Skogan said. “You can’t do anything about the weather.”</p><p>Lance Williams, an urban studies professor at Northeastern Illinois University who sat in on discussions about funding the mayor’s initiative, has remained a vocal critic of the plan, which he described as a “PR campaign” that is “good on paper” but isn’t “actionable” without independent oversight and a clear budget. </p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Lance Williams, urban studies professor at Northeastern Illinois University, has been a vocal critic of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s “Our City, Our Safety” initiative.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Provided</p></div></div>
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</div><p>He believes the dip in shooting and homicide victims is merely a reversion to more normal levels of violence after “the pandemic threw things way out of whack.”</p><p>Williams noted that officers pulled back in the name of social distancing and in response to the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, bringing down arrests. But he also claimed detainees were being cut loose from the Cook County Jail to avoid an outbreak, sending more “shooters” home as guns purchased with stimulus money flooded the street.</p><p>“The high-risk guys felt like, ‘Oh, it’s open season. We can do whatever we wanna do,’” he said. “That’s what they did. They went crazy because they knew they wouldn’t have any problems with the police.”</p><h3>‘It’s a 12-month, year-round strategy’</h3><p>City officials are now preparing for the looming summer months.</p><p>Acknowledging a need to scale up to cover special events and respond to violence, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said the department will continue pulling officers from outside patrol to help fill the void on a rolling basis.</p><p>But in a break from recent tradition, he isn’t rolling out a new summer strategy. Instead, he said the department will remain laser-focused on 55 beats that have accounted for more than half the city’s crime and cover much of the same ground as the 15 priority areas.</p><p>So far this year, there’s been a 35% drop in homicide and shooting victims across those beats, with only 13 of them seeing an increase from last year. The numbers, however, are still higher than the two previous years, tracking with the citywide trend.</p><p>“It’s a 12-month, year-round strategy,” he told the Sun-Times. “It’s not … you do something different for the summer that you don’t do for the fall, spring and winter. We think social services are needed year-round, we think community engagement’s needed year-round, we think beat integrity’s needed year-round.</p><p>“So these can’t just be a summer-only strategy. I think you’ve missed quite a few opportunities to build relationships if you wait until the summer.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<img class="Image" alt="Chicago Police Supt. David Brown addresses reporters at City Hall on Wednesday, March 2, 2022." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/6488d0f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8192x4598+0+433/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2Fgbg1ZldQET0CuHmDuWQafz9ZOWg%3D%2F0x0%3A8192x5464%2F8192x5464%2Ffilters%3Afocal%284096x2732%3A4097x2733%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23283717%2FBrown_City_Hall_030222.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/d810903/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8192x4598+0+433/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2Fgbg1ZldQET0CuHmDuWQafz9ZOWg%3D%2F0x0%3A8192x5464%2F8192x5464%2Ffilters%3Afocal%284096x2732%3A4097x2733%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23283717%2FBrown_City_Hall_030222.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago Police Supt. David Brown addresses reporters at City Hall on Wednesday, March 2, 2022.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file</p></div></div>
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</div><p>Mahal, on the other hand, said her team has to “ratchet up support” for kids who are out of school for the summer. She said it’s particularly important to plan events and other activities in the priority areas to ensure the city is “engaging youth, engaging families and providing safe spaces.”</p><p>“The more people that we have out on the block and on the street,” she added, “the more we tend to see people feeling safer and, most importantly, building those relationships with each other.”</p><h3>Shootings up in S. Lawndale, Humboldt Park</h3><p>As part of the “Our City Our Safety” plan, the city dedicated more than $50 million for violence reduction efforts in 2021, although a funding breakdown posted online last year shows nearly $10 million in contracts from the initial investment hadn’t been awarded. Another $411 million was included in this year’s budget, but city officials were unable to provide a full accounting of how exactly that money is being spent.</p><p>The budget set aside:<br></p><ul><li id="R9ptjw">$115 million or vacant lot reduction and improvements to parks;</li><li id="M1tWqF">$85 million more for violence reduction;</li><li id="knoo6f">$80 million for youth jobs programs and access and awareness for public support services; </li><li id="rrrDe7">$62 million for affordable housing and homelessness support services;</li><li id="FYGB23">$40 million for alternate crisis response and gender-based violence reduction efforts; and</li><li id="ikLnjX">$30 million for small business and workforce support programs.</li></ul><p>A list detailing the violence reduction investments — the only such breakdown made public — shows contracts worth nearly $28 million hadn’t been awarded as of Wednesday.</p><p>Officials are still struggling to tamp down violence in South Lawndale and Humboldt Park, the only priority communities where the number of shooting and homicide victims has risen this year. </p><p>On Monday, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/5/9/23064325/humboldt-park-shooting-antwon-gee-devel-jones" target="_blank" >two men were gunned down inside Humboldt Park</a> just a few hours after <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/9/23063990/humboldt-park-shooting" target="_blank" >three people were wounded</a> in a shooting just over a mile away.</p><p>In South Lawndale, which includes much of Little Village, Mahal said the violence has apparently spiked along entrenched gang lines. Through the end of last month, shootings have left five dead and 38 others wounded in South Lawndale, accounting for a 48% increase from the same time last year.</p><p>Brown pointed to a lack of violence interrupters “to meet some of the challenges” facing the largely Hispanic community, where more than $1.5 million has been spent on street outreach over the past two years. Mahal insisted more of that work is needed “across the board.”</p><p>“Not nearly as significant as in Little Village, but in other predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, we’re seeing some flareups,” Mahal said. “So I think that’s a concern of the outreach community and something that we want to work with them to address.”<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/10/23056077/shootings-homicides-dangerous-violent-communities-neighborhoods-lori-lightfoot-gun-cpd-policeTom SchubaAndy Boyle2022-04-19T15:03:52.462-05:002022-04-20T13:40:24-05:00CPD shifting cops to more violent beats as summer approaches
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>CPD Supt. David Brown speaks at a news conference on Tuesday, April 19, 2022. </p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Brian Rich/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<p>With warm weather expected this weekend ahead of the historically violent summer months, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown announced Tuesday that the department has prepared by pivoting away from a “crisis model” initially adopted to manage civil unrest and focusing instead on patrolling the city’s most dangerous areas.</p><p>During a news conference at police headquarters, Brown touted a nearly 10% decrease in homicides and a roughly 15% drop in shootings from 2021, the deadliest year in a quarter-century. To continue that “momentum,” Brown highlighted efforts to focus on 55 police beats that have accounted for half the city’s violence in recent years and to coordinate with other agencies.</p><p>Brown had drawn scrutiny for pulling officers out of districts to staff citywide units he established to respond to unrest, address violence and bolster community relations. While he initially shirked the community-based strategy implemented by his predecessor, former interim Supt. Charlie Beck, Brown has recently made an about-face and thinned the ranks of those citywide teams.</p><div class="RichTextSidebarModule Enhancement" data-module data-align-floatRight><a class="AnchorLink" id="module-d10000" name="module-d10000"></a>
<div class="RichTextSidebarModule-title">La Voz Sidebar</div>
<div class="RichTextModule-items RichTextBody"><br><i>Lea este artículo en español en </i><a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/la-voz/" target="_blank" ><i>La Voz Chicago</i></a>, <i>la sección bilingüe del Sun-Times.</i><br><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>The largest such unit, Brown’s signature Community Safety Team, grew to 872 sworn members in December 2020 but was cut to just 121 officers this month, according to the city’s inspector general’s office. </p><p>“We’re unwinding that model because that was due to a crisis and pivoting into what is in my opinion a gold standard model of beat policing, beat integrity, keeping officers on the beat,” he said. “We likely have the largest percentage of our officers on beats right now than we ever had, but we need more.”</p><p>Brown noted that officers who aren’t assigned to patrol streets are also being asked to “get from behind the desk, get out of the cars and spend time on the beat.” In addition, he acknowledged that he’s scaling back tactical teams to add more beat cops.</p><p>In January, Brown faced backlash when he <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/1/9/22875099/police-commanders-tactical-teams-chicago-police-department-policing-crime" target="_blank" >shifted most tactical officers to patrol assignments with little explanation</a>. The move was eventually attributed to a lack of “activity,” like arrests, although the department later began taking applications for new tactical officers and Community Safety Team members.</p><p>Brown insisted the department isn’t “undoing or getting rid of” the citywide and tactical teams but rather pulling back to prioritize the beat-minded strategy.</p><p>A police spokeswoman wouldn’t immediately provide a list of the 55 beats that are being targeted. But a similar plan announced in 2020 by Mayor Lori Lightfoot that <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/7/25/22557206/lightfoot-our-city-our-safety-gun-violence-chicago-plan" target="_blank" >focuses on tamping down violence in 15 community areas</a> has shown promise this year. </p><p>Those areas have seen a 16% drop in homicides and a 29% decrease in shootings, contributing significantly to the positive citywide trend, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis. Still, those numbers are still up 7% and 13% respectively from 2020.</p><p>Brown said the added focus in the 55 beats hinges on a block-by-block approach that aims to intervene in areas “that really are driving violence.” The plan relies on coordination with other city agencies and efforts to bolster social services and help build up block clubs, he noted.</p><p>“We really are, in my opinion, collaborating as we move into the warmer months to really continue our momentum in reducing crime,” he said.<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/4/19/23032375/cpd-violence-beats-david-brown-community-policing-cpd-crimeTom SchubaAndy Boyle2022-04-12T12:44:58.137-05:002022-04-12T17:45:02-05:00CPD should halt controversial push for more ‘positive’ interactions, monitor says in echoing AG
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>CPD Supt. David Brown has instituted a system for tracking officers’ “positive community interactions” and has a goal of 1.5 million such “PCIs” this year — but critics call it a quota system with “significant downsides.”</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Sun-Times file</p></div></div>
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<p>The team overseeing the Chicago Police Department’s court-ordered reform efforts slammed Supt. David Brown’s goal of conducting 1.5 million “positive community interactions” and urged the department to halt the initiative. </p><p><a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/4/12/23006605/chicago-police-department-reform-consent-decree-compliance-foot-pursuit-police-new-report" target="_blank" >A report released late Monday by the independent monitor</a> tracking the CPD’s compliance with a federal consent decree marks the latest rebuke of <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/14/22966419/cpd-police-positive-community-interactions-top-cop-david-brown-reform" target="_blank" >an initiative Brown announced in early January</a> and touted as instrumental for “engaging the community [and] building trust.” </p><p>Defined as a “brief, spontaneous, high visibility interaction that is positive, informative, helpful, or constructive in nature,” each positive community interaction, or PCI, must be reported to a city dispatcher. Despite Brown’s lofty claims, the progress report warns his goal “seriously risks increasing negative interactions, damaging public trust, and undermining its ability to ensure it is providing constitutional and effective policing.”</p><p>The Illinois attorney general’s office, which along with the monitoring team oversees City Hall’s compliance with the consent decree, penned a letter to city lawyers in February urging the police department to “suspend or at least pause” the effort to tally 1.5 million PCIs this year, calling it a “quota system” that’s “rife with significant downsides.” </p><p>In echoing some of the attorney general’s concerns, the monitoring team warns the initiative “risks negatively impacting existing supervision, accountability, and transparency mechanisms and undermining efforts to maintain and build public trust.” What’s more, the monitoring team’s report also says the initiative should be halted until the department addresses problems with the PCI program.</p><p>Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor and the court-appointed monitor, even singles out the PCI initiative in an unusual letter included in the report, warning that “superficial attempts to cut corners are likely to cause further delay” to the CPD’s reform push.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
<div class="RelatedList-title">Related</div>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/4/12/23006605/chicago-police-department-reform-consent-decree-compliance-foot-pursuit-police-new-report" target="_blank" >CPD makes significant headway on reform but still grapples with longstanding problems: report </a>
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<p><a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/14/22966419/cpd-police-positive-community-interactions-top-cop-david-brown-reform" target="_blank" >A Chicago Sun-Times analysis of PCI data last month</a> found multiple accuracy issues and revealed the department was on pace to hit Brown’s goal, which would mark a threefold increase over last year. A new analysis of data through March 3 shows that while PCIs dipped slightly after the letter from the attorney general’s office, the department remained on track.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>In a March 28 briefing with reporters, Brown said PCIs are part of a larger community engagement plan, one he said bolsters community relations. Still, he appeared to acknowledge the record-keeping issues.</p><p>“How do you measure it, and then how do you audit it to prove that it’s working? So all of that will be built into a single document,” he said, pointing to a more robust tracking system. “But we can’t wait to do it. This is so critical to our success.”</p><p>As noted by the monitoring team, the general order that includes that definition doesn’t specify “any data or variables” officers are required to provide, meaning the data only shows that a PCI was reported.</p><p>None of the PCI data analyzed by the Sun-Times contains the race, gender or age of the people involved in each interaction, nor does it explain why an interaction is considered positive. The report acknowledges that, noting that the PCI system currently doesn’t include any feedback from community members on their interpretation of the encounters. </p><p>The vagueness of the definition and the lack of specific data effectively “incentivizes officers to self-servingly interpret and report all interactions as PCIs,” according to the report. </p><p>Perhaps most alarming, the report notes the directive doesn’t specify whether a PCI can be related to other law enforcement actions, like a stop, search, citation or an arrest.</p><p>Given that PCIs have “increased dramatically” in police districts that have “historically included the most police contacts,” the report raises concerns that the jump “could reflect increased law enforcement actions under a new, misleading name.”</p><p>The three police districts in which the most PCIs were recorded last year are all on the West Side. Two of the districts have majority-Black populations; one is majority-Hispanic. All have high levels of violent crime and drug activity, according to the Sun-Times analysis.</p><p>Through March 3, the latest analysis shows the top spot belongs to the Near North Side, an area with relatively low violent crime.<b> </b>The Ogden District has the second-most PCI calls this year and earned the top spot in 2021, when it had had a little less than double the citywide average for per capita shooting and homicide victims.</p><p>Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois, said the city’s overarching approach to reform ignores “evidence and experience” as he bemoaned the lack of oversight in the PCI program.</p><p>“We’re supposed to just accept that these aren’t just … stops of some sort,” Yohnka said. “This all feels very precarious, given the history of these kinds of stops in the city of Chicago.”<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/4/12/23007003/consent-decree-monitor-cpd-halt-quota-positive-community-interaction-interactions-pci-pcisTom SchubaAndy Boyle2022-04-01T13:43:58.782-05:002022-04-04T16:25:33-05:00Chicago crime: Drop in killings, shootings, but carjackings, other crimes up from year ago
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<p>After seeing the most violent year since the 1990s, Chicago has logged fewer shootings and murders so far this year, though other crimes like carjackings are up.</p><p>Homicides are down almost 7% compared to this time last year, with 128 people killed through the end of March, according to the latest police data. The number of people shot — 593 — is down 15%.</p><p>The drop in shootings has been the greatest in 15 of the city’s <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/12/15/22747091/violence-prevention-budget-lightfoot-our-city-safety" target="_blank" >most violent community areas</a> that have been targeted by the Lightfoot administration, according to a Sun-Times analysis.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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</div><p>Those areas on the West Side and South Side have seen a 24% decrease in the number of people shot, or 110 fewer than last year, accounting for nearly all of this year’s decrease in shootings. In three of the neighborhoods, the number of shooting victims dropped by half or more.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/31/22996487/cpd-police-department-clearance-murder-solved-rate-david-brown-kim-foxx-prosecutor-charges" target="_blank" >Half of murder cases considered ‘solved’ by Chicago police in 2021 didn’t lead to charges</a>
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<p>But those 15 areas still accounted for 64% of the city’s killings and 60% of all people shot, and they remain more than eight times more violent than the rest of the city. In five areas, homicides have increased this year.</p><p>Many other types of crimes have increased across the city this year. After seeing a drop earlier in the year following the creation of a task force, the number of people carjacked — 499 — is up 3%.</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/12/31/22848890/chicago-carjackings-inside-mind-chicago-carjacker" target="_blank" >Inside the mind of a Chicago carjacker</a>
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<p>In a written statement accompanying end-of-month statistics, the Chicago Police Department said it has made 72 arrests for carjacking this year, with 57% of them juveniles.</p><p>Robberies are up 11%, burglaries are up 36%, motor vehicle thefts are up 43%, and thefts are up 70%. Aggravated batteries are up 9% and sexual assaults 3%.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<span>Source: A Sun-Times analysis of CPD data</span>
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</div><p>But some of those crimes are down from what they were in 2019, which Police Superintendent David Brown has repeatedly referred to as the city’s baseline goal because it was before the pandemic hit.</p><p>Burglaries are down 22% compared to that year, aggravated batteries are down 7%, and sexual assaults are down 2%. All other major crimes are up.</p><p>Experts have said the jump in some crime statistics, such as burglaries, thefts and robberies, could be because more people out and about, leaving their homes and heading back to work.</p><p>Many major cities have seen a rise in violent crime, according to FBI statistics, with a nearly 30% spike in homicides nationwide for 2020. The agency hasn’t released statistics for 2021 yet, but Chicago saw a 60% increase in homicides in 2020 compared to 2019.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<span>Source: A Sun-Times analysis of CPD data</span>
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</div><p>The Englewood police district on the South Side has been the most violent so far this year, with 62 homicide and shooting victims, giving it a rate of 10.6 victims per 10,000 residents, according to a Sun-Times analysis. That makes it five times more violent than the city’s average of 2.1.</p><p>The Loop and River North police districts have also seen a rise in homicide and shooting victims, with 20 so far this year, compared to three last year. Their victim rates per 10,000 residents are 1.5 and 0.5, both less than the city average.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<span>Source: A Sun-Times analysis of CPD data</span>
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</div><p>The department noted in its press release it had cleared 88 murder cases this year, with a clearance rate of almost 69%. It doesn’t say how many of those cases ended in an arrest or how many are cases from this year. In 2021, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/31/22996487/cpd-police-department-clearance-murder-solved-rate-david-brown-kim-foxx-prosecutor-charges" target="_blank" >according to a Sun-Times analysis</a>, the police boasted of a record-high clearance rate though half of the murder cases didn’t end in an arrest.</p><p>The department also says it’s taken 2,541 guns off the street so far this year.<br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/4/1/23006317/chicago-homicides-shootings-increase-carjackings-crimes-crime-statisticsAndy Boyle2022-03-14T12:35:27.802-05:002022-03-14T12:45:41-05:00Read the Illinois attorney general’s memo admonishing the CPD for its PCI program
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul </p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<p>Through a records request, the Sun-Times obtained a memo from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office that urged city lawyers to “suspend or at least pause” a newly announced Chicago Police department effort to hit 1.5 million so-called positive community interactions in 2022.</p><p>Read the memo below:</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center><div class="Enhancement-item">
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</div></div><p><i>If you don’t see the memo above, </i><a class="Link" href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23299016/70110_RM___OAG_Comments.pdf" target="_blank" ><i>you can click here to read it directly</i></a><i>.</i><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/14/22967707/illinois-attorney-general-memo-cpd-police-department-positive-community-interactions-quota-arrestsTom SchubaAndy Boyle2022-03-14T12:32:39.982-05:002022-04-01T14:31:25-05:00Chicago police plan for 1.5M ‘positive’ interactions ‘deeply problematic’: Attorney General Kwame Raoul
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<img class="Image" alt="A Chicago police officer helps pour pop into cups for kids in the 6400 block of South Cicero Ave. last May." srcset="https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/fc660c4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+155/resize/490x275!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FMD15iT9i9lKguSHo27yDL9o-yY4%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x2000%2F3000x2000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281668x997%3A1669x998%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23298893%2Fmerlin_97862262.jpg 1x,https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/47b4718/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1684+0+155/resize/980x550!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2FMD15iT9i9lKguSHo27yDL9o-yY4%3D%2F0x0%3A3000x2000%2F3000x2000%2Ffilters%3Afocal%281668x997%3A1669x998%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F23298893%2Fmerlin_97862262.jpg 2x" width="490" height="275"
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>A Chicago police officer helps pour pop into cups for kids in the 6400 block of South Cicero Ave. last May.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Tyler LaRiviere / Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<p>Four days after Chicago closed the book on its most violent year in a quarter century, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police Supt. David Brown pinned their hopes on a novel crime-fighting approach.</p><p>Brown, Lightfoot’s choice to usher in court-ordered reforms outlined in a federal consent decree, set a goal for the year of <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/6/4/22519122/chicago-police-department-community-policing-program-supt-david-brown" target="_blank" >logging at least 1.5 million “positive community interactions,”</a> of PCIs — a three-fold increase from 2021.</p><p>The effort to prioritize such exchanges — like helping change a tire or giving directions — was presented as a way to build trust and crack cases.</p><p>The department has encouraged community outreach for years but has never enforced it at such levels. A Sun-Times investigation now raises serious questions about Brown’s plan — and even its legality.</p><p>While officers must record each interaction, they often leave out crucial information that makes it virtually impossible for the department to verify that an account is accurate, according to a review of internal records.</p><p>Many records are missing the officer’s name or their star number. Others don’t give detailed information about the location where a PCI occurred. </p><p>And not a single record contains information about who was helped or what made the interaction positive.</p><p>The state attorney general’s office found so many problems with the program that it has urged the city’s lawyers to “suspend or at least pause” the effort to notch 1.5 million interactions, calling it “a quota system” that is “rife with significant downsides.”</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
<div class="RelatedList-title">Related</div>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2022/3/14/22978034/drug-induced-homicides-chicago-police-department-training-brendan-deenihan" target="_blank" >Chicago police detectives begin training to investigate drug deaths as possible homicides </a>
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<p>“As you are likely aware,” a Feb. 7 memo obtained by the Sun-Times says, “the use of quotas in law enforcement — whether described as goals, targets, performance standards or activity metrics — is deeply problematic.”</p><div class="RelatedList Enhancement" data-module data-align-center>
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<a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/14/22967707/illinois-attorney-general-memo-cpd-police-department-positive-community-interactions-quota-arrests" target="_blank" >READ THE FULL ATTORNEY GENERAL MEMO HERE</a>
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<p>Setting such a high, ill-defined goal could even backfire, tempting officers to “coast” after reaching their targets, counter to the spirit of community policing, according to the memo.</p><p>The attorney general’s office, which is overseeing City Hall’s compliance with the consent decree along with a federal monitor, sent the memo in response to a policy proposal submitted by the Chicago Police Department that sought to more clearly define PCIs and offer guidance to the officers tasked with conducting them.</p><p>In a lengthy list of comments and recommendations, the attorney general’s office urged the police department to avoid using “crude performance measures” that exclude “the quality of interactions” and risk “having officers treat community members as statistics to be collected, and not as human beings with problems, concerns and needs.”</p><h3>104 PCIs a day for a single cop</h3><p>The department began conducting PCIs under former Supt. Garry McCarthy. They have become part of a broader shift toward community policing, an approach increasingly embraced by law enforcement agencies nationwide.</p><p>A department directive describes them as “brief, spontaneous, high-visibility” encounters that are “positive, informative, helpful or constructive in nature.”</p><p>PCIs reported by officers spiked in the weeks after Lightfoot and Brown announced the goal of 1.5 million, according to a Sun-Times analysis of data obtained through an open records request.</p><p>Through Jan. 20, the latest data provided, the police had logged almost three times as many PCIs per day in 2022 on average compared to 2021.</p><p>In the first 20 days of this year, they logged 78,560 PCIs, up from 3,341 in 2021, just before last year’s program started to ramp up. </p><p>But information about each interaction often is missing key data that would be needed for any audit of how the program was performing.</p><p>For example, take Officer Sergio Pacheco from the Odgen district on the West Side. He logged 1,565 PCIs during the first 20 days of this year — more than double the officer who came in second. They were reported over just 15 days, giving him an average of 104 PCIs each day.</p><p>The data don’t provide any information about who he or any other officer talked to, including race, gender or age. It also doesn’t say how many people were involved in the interactions or what was positive about the encounters.</p><p>Pacheco, who has been a Chicago cop since 2018, declined to comment.</p><p>He was named in a federal lawsuit filed by 21-year-old Alycia Moaton, an activist who accused Pacheco and other officers of wrongfully arresting her during a racial justice demonstration downtown in August 2020. Moaton said she was sprayed with a chemical agent and groped by an officer during a search, then knocked down by police and called obscenities as Pacheco and other officers took her into custody.</p><p>The suit was dismissed this month after a settlement was reached, a person familiar with the matter told the Sun-Times. Pacheco was removed as a defendant two days before that.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<h3>Increase in positive interaction calls in Chicago</h3>
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The map below shows the increase in positive interaction calls by police district. Every district saw a soaring rate of calls between 2020 and 2021 with the 10th district seeing by far the largest increase.
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</div><p></p><h3>‘Impossible to assess’</h3><p>About 33,000 of the nearly 628,000 PCIs logged since 2020 — about 5.3% of the calls — don’t have an officer’s name listed. And about 3.8% don’t include an officer’s star number.</p><p>The location listed for the interactions also is inconsistently reported. Some give the block address, while others list the name of a location, such as a restaurant or generic train station.</p><p>In 14% of all PCIs reviewed by the Sun-Times, the data don’t include the police district, instead only a designation for a citywide police radio channel.</p><p>Only 9% included information about a police beat, making it even harder to determine where the PCIs occurred.</p><p>The poor record-keeping was noted in the attorney general’s office’s memo, which said that has plagued similar programs across the country, “making it impossible to assess and learn how these departments can continue to improve.”</p><p>In setting the goal for the new year, Brown said PCIs were tools for “engaging the community [and] building trust.” </p><p>Lightfoot lauded the effort, saying community trust is the “secret sauce” to solving crimes.</p><p>But the attorney general’s office warned that setting a goal or quota for PCIs “risks exacerbating known disparities in trust levels between certain communities and CPD.”</p><p>Without a carefully crafted program and training, the memo said, officers will prioritize interactions with residents who are “easier” to engage rather than those who are distrustful of the police.</p><p>Officers alsomight be driven to “misconduct, fraud and corruption,” making up or wrongly describing their actions to meet the requirements, according to the memo. Supervisors focused on meeting the goals might “wrongly encourage or tolerate misreporting, fraud and other misconduct,” it said.</p><p>Just before the Jan. 4 news conference, Brown and Lightfoot had threatened to demote supervisors who couldn’t deliver more PCIs and arrests, <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2022/1/5/22869450/police-cpd-lori-lightfoot-david-brown-arrest-increase-crime-quota-demotion-clearance-rate-murder" target="_blank" >the Sun-Times reported.</a></p><p>The attorney general’s office urged the department to develop a system to audit PCIs to eliminate the potential “fraud or abuse.”</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<h3>Difference in positive interaction calls between 2020 and 2021</h3>
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All police districts saw a sharp increase in calls between 2020 and 2021, but minority neighborhoods saw some of the largest jumps.
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<h4>Majority White Police Districts</h4>
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<p>Source: A Sun-Times analysis of OEMC data</p>
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</div><p></p><h3>‘First point of contact’</h3><p>Police representatives didn’t answer questions from the Sun-Times, instead responding with a written statement that repeated many of Brown’s points from the Jan. 4 news conference.</p><p>“The department’s focus on getting officers out of their cars, out from behind their desks, and out into the community is not about a quota; it’s about changing our culture and making a difference,” the police statement said. “In many situations, officers are the first point of contact for residents and wear many hats. They are first-responders, liaisons and ambassadors, and community members themselves.”</p><p>Annie Thompson, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, declined to answer questions about the memo, saying her office “continues to work collaboratively with CPD and the city to resolve the comments we submitted during the consent decree’s review process.”</p><p>The office’s memo was signed by Senior Assistant Attorney General Aaron Wenzloff and also sent to Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor appointed by an independent monitor overseeing the implementation of the consent decree.</p><p>Hickey wouldn’ comment. <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/2/16/22938169/independent-monitor-provides-update-on-cpd-compliance-with-consent-decree" target="_blank" >Last month, she said</a> the police department’s “great data challenges” make it hard to come up with best practices. She said the department’s community engagement was “still not sufficient” and called it a “very cumbersome organization when it comes to data.”</p><p>The goal-driven system of PCIs ultimately could affect the department’s compliance with the consent decree, which prohibits the use of numeric quotas and stems from a 2017 lawsuit the attorney general’s office filed against the city over the police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. </p><p>Last month, Hickey said the department has reached full or partial compliance with just over half of the points in the federal court order.</p><p>Shareese Pryor, who negotiated the consent decree and oversaw its enforcement while previously working for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, also raised alarms about the quality and nature of the PCIs. She said they’re not the best tool for gaining trust in minority communities with “a history of over-policing and negative police encounters.”</p><p>The three police districts that recorded the most PCIs last year were all in predominantly minority areas on the West Side that have high levels of violent crime and drug activity.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<h3>Violence in Chicago Police Districts</h3>
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These maps show the number of homicides and shootings (both fatal and non-fatal) in all of Chicago's police districts between 2020 and 2021.
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<p>Sources: City of Chicago, a Sun-Times analysis of 2020 census data</p>
<p>Graphics by Jesse Howe</p>
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</div><p>Pryor and Michelle Garcia, the deputy legal director for the ACLU of Illinois, said PCIs could be used as a pretext for stopping and searching people.</p><p>“It’s up to the cops to decide what’s positive,” said Garcia, a former Justice Department official. “They’re the ones doing the reporting. There’s no auditing. ... If anything, it allows and encourages more unconstitutional stops.”</p><p><i>Contributing: Jesse Howe</i><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/3/14/22966419/cpd-police-positive-community-interactions-top-cop-david-brown-reformTom SchubaAndy Boyle