Lightfoot to spend $7.5 million to expand street outreach to combat gang violence

Interim Chicago Police Supt. Charlie Beck has argued that “street outreach workers” with deep ties to Chicago neighborhoods “can address gang and gun violence in a way that no police officer can.”

On Thursday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot did her part to make certain the Chicago Police Department has more of that valuable partnership to build on crime-fighting progress that saw homicides dip below 500 in 2019.

City Hall issued a pair of “requests for proposals” for $7.5 million worth of programs aimed at expanding “community-based street outreach” and integrating “trauma-informed victim services” for Chicagoans at the “highest risk” of being victims or perpetrators of violence.

Lightfoot’s first budget includes $11.5 million in community-based public safety investments, seven times the amount the city spent on similar programs last year. The RFP is the “first installment.”

It will provide a “cohort of street outreach organizations with violence interruption training” and access to city services. It will also expand access to crisis intervention and de-escalation services for high-risk individuals in fifteen neighborhoods plagued by gang violence.

They are: Auburn-Gresham; Austin; Chicago Lawn, East Garfield Park, Englewood: Greater Grand Crossing; Humboldt Park; New City; North Lawndale; Roseland; South Lawndale; South Shore; West Englewood; West Garfield Park; and West Pullman.

Lightfoot’s decision to build up Chicago’s network of street outreach workers can’t come soon enough for Beck, the retired Los Angeles police chief whose arrival in Chicago was hastened by Lightfoot’s decision to fire retiring Supt. Eddie Johnson a month early.

She accused him of lying about circumstances surrounding an embarrassing drinking and driving incident in mid-October when Johnson was found slumped over the steering wheel of his police vehicle.

Earlier this week, Beck told the City Club of Chicago how important a role he expects street outreach workers to play in reducing gang violence.

”When you have a conversation with a young man ... who believes that the only solution to conflict is gunfire, that has to be had by somebody who’s walked in the shoes they are now walking in,” Beck said then.

“My job is the last homicide. Your job is stopping the next homicide. This collaboration can have huge, huge benefits for, particularly, gun violence in Chicago.”

Noting that the expansion is already baked into Lightfoot’s 2020 budget, Beck said, “The great news is that these resources already exist. When I was at the same point in L.A., we had to create them from whole cloth. This is one of the many positive things about Chicago.”