The department plans to hire almost 1,000 officers to combat growing violence throughout the windy city.
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Adam Collins, communications director for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, said the mayor has been “very clear that his priority in the budget is going to be public safety” and that the additional officers will come “without an increase in general revenue taxes”, including sales, property, and gasoline.
Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the department will add 970 sworn officers, bringing the force to an estimated 13,500 by the end of 2018.
Last month, Chicago had 90 homicides, the highest monthly total in two decades. Other violent crimes are on the rise, too: criminal sexual assaults have gone up 18 percent and robberies 27 percent, according to police department data cited by USA Today.
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. Emanuel campaigned five years ago on the promise he’d hire an extra 1,000 officers, but instead he disbanded special units and transferred officers to beat jobs, according to the Sun Times. He later eliminated 1,400 positions.
In addition, the department intends to add 92 field training officers, 112 sergeants and 50 lieutenants to the ranks.
The anouncement comes as the mayor and his police department have been under mounting pressure over rising crime in Chicago. “Until we get serious about holding them accountable, and put them in jail, and keep them there, then we’re going to continue to spin around like this”, the chief said in frustration.
“We came back and built our plan and – let me tell you, people – the mayor delivered for us”, Johnson told his fellow cops. 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.
“You don’t want to utilize overtime to the point that you burn your officers out”, Johnson said.
The superintendent said there had been no option to “pull officers from the safer communities into the more violent ones”.
It is unclear how the city plans to pay for the hiring surge that would cost well over $100 million in the first-year alone. The percentage of homicides that detectives have been able to solve has dropped significantly.
Johnson said he is already seeing some positive changes.
“So we’re meeting it with a new response, which is more police, more technology, greater investment in mentoring, our summer jobs and our afterschool”, he said. Chicago has more murders than Los Angeles and NY combined ― both of which are bigger cities.
Last year, the city was forced to release a video of a white officer fatally shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014, sparking major protests as well as federal and local investigations.
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The administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel has long insisted additional personnel were not necessary to augment its current staff level of 12,100, a number 400 less than in 2010.
