Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will focus on a revamped youth mentoring program and ask for the community’s help in his speech on crime prevention.
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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, right, delivers his new public safety plan to combat gun violence for the nation’s third-largest city as police superintendent Eddie Johnson, left, listens at the Malcolm X Community College Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016, in Chicago.
The invitation-only speech comes as the city has seen a troubling spike in crime and his police department is under an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation. Emanuel’s administration has announced the proposed hiring of almost 1,000 new police officers and highlighted more support and mentorship of youth, a key theme he’s expected to address in the evening speech at a community college campus.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was on WLS this morning, talking about Mayor Emanuel’s multi-faceted crime-fighting strategy.
Emanuel says the “deck has been stacked” against many youths in Chicago and it’s time to reshuffle the deck.
About two dozen protesters gathered outside Chicago’s Malcolm X College, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivered a speech outlining his plans to combat the surge of violence plaguing the city this year. Outside, there were a few protesters calling for scrutiny of police misconduct investigations, a theme that’s rippled for months.
But his second term has seen Emanuel confronting a restive city, after the release late previous year of video of a police officer firing 16 shots into teenager Laquan McDonald.
“When a six year-old girl playing on her porch with her family is shot, or the son of a police officer home from college on summer break is murdered on his front stoop, or an anti-violence activist is gunned down while playing video games at his friend’s house, or an Army veteran who mentors at-risk youth at the YMCA is killed in his auto at night, our hearts are torn”, the mayor said. Circulation of the video prompted frequent protests, allegations of a cover-up and repeated calls for Emanuel to step down.
“They want more police on the street who know and respect the residents of their neighborhoods”, Emanuel said on Thursday. He recently announced plans for the city to hire 1,000 new police officers to deal with its wave of violent crime.
“The sooner he can get out of our city, the sooner we can put someone in there who is going to care about the interests of black communities”, Green said.
But Shari Runner, president of the Chicago Urban League, is strongly against the notion that parents or “absentee fathers” should be held responsible for the city’s violence problem. “The shooting of Laquan McDonald brought it to the breaking point”.
His speech also touched on new technology, including gunshot-tracing cameras; gun shop legislation; and the need for more neighborhood resources.
“This will make us a bigger department, a better department and a more effective department”, says Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who adds that the new officers will begin hitting the streets in January. He was hand-picked by Emanuel earlier this year to lead an initiative to rebuild trust between police and the community while restoring morale in the ranks. “So we have to fix the other parts of it in order for this crime to come down, but I will say this, the additional officers will give us a bit of relief”.
Demonstrators calling for an end to gun violence and the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel march through downtown Chicago on December 31. In 2016, Chicago’s homicide rate skyrocketed and is on pace to top 700, up from 480 over a year ago. Overall, the city has recorded more than 500 homicides this year higher than all of 2015 and is on pace to climb past the 600-homicide mark for the first time since 2003.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday suggested violence in Chicago is worse than violence in Afghanistan.
During the speech, Emanuel described several high-profile cases, his voice cracking when noting the shooting death of the 19-year-old son of a Chicago police officer.
In his long awaited crime control speech Thursday night, Emanuel pledged to hire more officers, but was not clear on how the city would pay for them.
The mentorship program, building on Emanuel’s past efforts, will target some 7,200 middle school and high school students from 20 of the city’s most violent neighborhoods.
“I think that everybody knows that mass incarceration – which has happened over the last 30 years – started with the war on drugs”, she said.
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