Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) have recently unveiled a new public safety plan this past week which has the potential to drastically reduce the amount of crime in one of the nation’s largest cities. This plan focuses on both the short and long term on ending Chicago’s violent track record.
What We Know:
- The lengthy 100 plus page plan is dubbed “Our Safety, Our City,” and calls for a variety of actions that will not only reduce violence but help in the aftermath in communities. Specifically, the plan includes outreach to victims of gun and domestic violence, expanding housing and employment access to at-risk communities, and expand funding for street outreach and intervention, just to name a few.
- The sections of the plan most relevant to now include several initiatives related to making new police reforms such as licensing individual cops and expanding the requirements for those on duty to have proper diversity and cultural sensitivity training.
- The primary focus will be 15 of the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates in the Chicago area. The timeline of the plan’s goals is set between now and May 2023, coinciding with the end of Mayor Lightfoot’s first term. At the moment, the plan doesn’t seem to detail how this initiative will be funded. It’s worth noting that the city of Chicago has faced an estimated budget of about $2 billion for the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years.
Vaughn Bryant, executive director of Metropolitan Peace Initiatives in Chicago, said that “when it comes to licensing, we have a lot of challenges with that, but I think it’s a worthy cause. Lawyers are licensed, clinicians are licensed … there’s a lot of cultural change that has to happen from us influencing it.”
- Bryant noted that the change is all in an effort to reconstruct trust between police and Chicago’s Black and Brown communities. In addition to this plan, the city also has plans to make a “co-responder pilot program,” where police would be accompanied by mental health professionals on specific 911 calls. Eddie Bocanegra, senior director of Heartland Alliance’s READI Chicago program, thinks the move will “make a huge difference”.
- The plan comes as Chicago is one of the many cities this year feeling the rage of social injustice on the streets from months of protests since the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Riots chaos and controversies have pleaded the Windy City such as the Black aldermen accusing Mayor Lightfoot of previously deploying more police resources downtown.
July marked Chicago’s most violent month in nearly 30 years. There were roughly more than 100 murders and over 580 shooting victims, several of which involved children. Bryant says the mayor’s plan might not have an immediate impact on those figures, but he believes its a step in the right direction for the city.
