Chicago City Wire

The city’s police complement is down 1,700 from 2019 when former Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office. The loss in cops through retirements (many early) or moving on to collar county police forces, has led to reactive instead of proactive policing, experts say, and ever worsening morale for the remaining cops. Without more hiring, it’s only going to get worse.

Writing recently in the Illinois Policy Institute, former mayoral candidate Paul Vallas said his hope is that a planned budget increase for the department actually goes to hiring more cops; in the past the funds have been redirected to fend off budget shortfalls.

The attrition over the years has led to lower spending in the short run, but that’s somewhat offset by an increase in overtime pay, he wrote. Meanwhile police are simply not there to respond. 

“The impact is seen in the lack of police officers available to respond to 911 calls and an abysmal arrest rate," Vallas said. "Arrests were made in fewer than 12% of all crimes in 2022; the arrests between 2019 and 2021 were down 50%.”

For Joseph Giacalone, retired New York Police Department Sergeant SDS (Supervisor Detective Squad), and Adjunct Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, it all starts at the top

“The major urban departments will continue to suffer due to misinformed policy choices and vote pandering,” Giacalone told Chicago City Wire. "Bail reform, raise the age for charges, no foot chase policies, no traffic stops, no prosecutions, and certainly no stop, question and frisk."

“I’m declaring that the days of proactive policing in America have ended,” Giacalone wrote in an piece for The Daily Telegraph. “Progressive policies and laws have all but ensured that. Cops have always been willing to put their personal safety at risk, but it’s not right that they should risk their personal and family financial well-being too. Good luck getting any police officers to go above and beyond in these times. The politicians have created an atmosphere of ignorance and apathy.”

For Vallas, police numbers will go a long way to reverse the rising crime trend. 

"Restoring police strength must be part of a strategy that restores true community-based policing in which each local police beat is covered by officers who know and are known by the community and are responding to 911 calls in real time," he wrote. "Police beats must include CTA stations and train platforms. This requires a policing strategy that assigns more than 54% of its officers to police districts."