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New 2021 Chicago data shows 400,000 high-priority incidents
where dispatchers had no police available to send
New 2021 Chicago data shows 400,000 high-priority incidents where dispatchers had no police available to send – Wirepoints | Wirepoints
Years of no support from city leadership, anti-policing legislation and the damaging rhetoric of the “defund” movement have taken a toll on Chicago police morale and manpower. All that has left police so thin that, in 2021, one of law enforcement’s most basic functions, responding to...
wirepoints.org
As crime continues to roil economic and social life in post-George Floyd, post-Covid Chicago, getting policing and criminal justice right are crucial. City officials are failing at that task.
We’re already seen anemic rates of arrest and prosecutions in Chicago, accompanied by finger-pointing between politicians over crime and the court system. And years of no support from city leadership, anti-policing legislation and the damaging rhetoric of the “defund” movement have taken a toll on Chicago police morale and manpower.
All that has spread the police force so thin that, in 2021, one of law enforcement’s most basic functions, responding to high-priority emergency service calls in a timely manner, was regularly beyond their capacity.
New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.
That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021.
High priority calls include Priority Level 1 incidents, which represent “an imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage/loss,” and Priority Level 2 incidents when “timely police action…has the potential to affect the outcome of an incident.”
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To many observers in Chicago, the increase in RAPs is one more indication of the need to restore police manpower to previous levels. The count of active sworn officers has fallen to 11,638 in June of this year, down from 13,251 in July of 2019, according to an OIG dashboard.
But Chicago politicians, Cook County judges, prosecutors and state lawmakers will have to make policing a far more attractive proposition than it is today to repair the damaged morale that’s helping drive the ongoing exodus of sworn officers.
Commentary:
Matt Rosenberg's reporting and Data is extremely concerning. Unsafe levels of Police staffing have becoming common in our Blue Plantation Urban combat zones, but Chicago has excelled at it. It’s likely due to a combination of factors, including dangerous working police conditions, a wary even hostile citizenry, a media climate that portrays cops as the bad guys and exacerbates the prior factors, and a city council and mayor (boy she gives me the creeps) and management that inclines toward defund the cops.
Notably and ironically, there has not been a Republican elected as Mayor of Chicago since 1927.
Among the purposes of Federal, State and City government is to protect citizens. Clearly, Chicago has failed in this essential duty. Under the current political Democratically controlled conditions, it not possible for CPD to staff up.
In order to clean up Chicago, it's essential for the citizens to elect a new Mayor and City Council that is not connected to the Democrat Party.
Chicago was once a great city; it can be great again. First and foremost, the have to elect new leadership, leadership that reflects the needs of citizens, not special interests.
