Chicago City Wire

Calling 911 after being shot, robbed or assaulted in Chicago yields only a 50/50 chance of police response, according to the alarming results of an investigation by Wirepoints.

Through a FOIA of Chicago Police Department records, the research group found that there were 783,000 high-priority 911 calls in 2023. For 437,000 of those calls, or 56%, long periods of backlogs meant there were no police immediately available.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor, and retired NYPD homicide detective, Joseph Giacalone, said in an email to Chicago City Wire that he was “shocked” when he read the report.

“The same politicians that labeled the cops as the enemy will now be declaring that crime is down with, wait for it, less cops!” Giacalone said. “As the Chicago PD and other police departments across the country continue to shed personnel at record numbers, you will see and hear more about this.”

He noted that due to lack of officers, the Pittsburgh police have been forced to close a number of stations that used to be open 24/7.

“The politicians and the activists have voted to defund the police. Don’t worry Chicago, Mayor Johnson is already planning on investing more in communities to ‘engage crime.’ Someone tell him he has an agency for that.”

“The fact that it’s essentially a 50/50 chance as to whether officers show up promptly for a violent crime should be horrifying to the residents of Chicago,” the Wirepoints report said. “In part, sources tell us it’s an operational and logistics problem. It’s also a staffing problem – the number of beat cops in the city are down nearly 20% compared to 2019. Police are also forced to increasingly focus on consent decree compliance and bureaucratic paperwork, insiders tell us, which keeps officers off the street.”

Wirepoints also blamed city leadership—or lack of it—that’s made Chicago’s policing and criminal justice system dysfunctional. With violent crimes at its highest point since 2019, “a lack of police response is but one of the many problems keeping Chicagoans unsafe.”

As example, Wirepoints cited the case of a Wicker Park woman who in  May called 911 after two men, wearing masks, entered her home, and then ran off when she screamed. The dispatcher told her that the police were on their way, but six calls later, one finally included a conversation with a supervisor, she discovered that the police had no units to send.

“He [the supervisor] then recommended the woman call her alderman to encourage him to hire more police," the report said. "She was also asked if she ‘had a weapon or considered getting one.’”

The alarming news comes at a time when violent crime in the city continues to trend upward.  

“Chicagoans experienced 7.8% more violent crime from June 2023 through May 2024 than during the previous 12 months, with cases of robbery driving most of the surge,” a recent Illinois Policy Institute shows.

“Residents reported 29,377 violent crimes through May. But as cases of violent crime increased, the arrest rate for these felonies dropped to just 10.8%, the lowest level in the past five years.”