Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to make a much-anticipated speech tomorrow on the state of public safety in Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office did not immediately return an email requesting comment about the cost of pensions and benefits that will come with so many new hires.
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“There’s also a big piece with summer jobs that we’ve dramatically grown in my tenure, also after school, and a significant piece in mentoring to keep kids in school and on the right track so the rest of their lives are more secure from a values and economic basis”.
The hiring plan includes more than 500 new police officers, and hundreds more to beef up the ranks of detectives and supervisors. So the 970 additional officers will carry a price tag of nearly $134 million.
The Chicago Police Department is recruiting an additional 970 officers to add to its current roster of 12,500 officers in order to address the alarming increase in crime this year. But each time he addressed the issue, Emanuel also was quick to seize on the need for stronger gun laws and more investment in struggling neighborhoods as other keys to addressing the city’s surging crime.
Many details of the hiring, though, remained vague about exactly when the promised officers would be hired and how the city would pay for them. But he added that Emanuel assured him recently that he was confident the hiring could be done without raising taxes; the council approved new water and sewer tax increases earlier this month.
Hiring more police officers is a change in tactics regarding how the Department has tried to handle the problem in recent years, which was to increase the amount of overtime the existing police officers were required to work per week, according to the Associated Press (AP). Most said they support the concept, but some have concerns about how the cash-strapped city will pay for it.
The president of the Chicago police union applauded Wednesday’s announcement.
Johnson said the new hires will help rebuild trust between the community and his department, which has long struggled with a reputation for police misconduct and brutality, especially after several recent police shootings. It has, instead, increased, with 90 homicides recorded for the month of August, which is the highest on record for the past two decades. That is more than all of the homicides in Chicago for the entire year of 2015. Besides the murder rate being at a record-setting pace, there has also been a dramatic increase in the number of shooting incidents in Chicago in 2016; the number now sits at more than 2,500. There have also been more than 2,500 shooting incidents so far this year, about 700 more than in the same time period last year. The percentage of homicides that detectives have been able to solve has dropped significantly.
City officials have not detailed the cost or how the new jobs will be paid for.
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Earlier this week, former Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy, who was sacked from his position following the release of the McDonald video, suggested that police officers have been put in an untenable situation. The fallout prompted Emanuel to fire his first police superintendent, Garry McCarthy at the end of past year.
