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U.S. NEWSThursday 9 March 2017
American Living:
Chicago tries to learn from New York crime fighting success
DON BABWIN them. While the number community activists about proportionally affected where violent crime might
COLLEEN LONG of homicides surged to the excessive force. black and Hispanic men
CHICAGO (AP) — Even highest in nearly two de- All this is a sharp contrast has plummeted in the past occur.
before President Donald cades last year at 762, the with New York, where the three years. Low-level pos-
Trump tweeted a threat to percentage of those mur- NYPD during the 1990s session of marijuana is now That gives officers instant
send “in the Feds” to curb ders solved by police fell turned to the “broken win- considered a ticketable
Chicago’s gun violence, ten points to 26 percent, dows” policing strategy of offense, and overall arrests access to information
he was saying on the cam-
paign trail that there was both when they are in their
a simple solution to the
bloodshed: police should squad cars and out on the
get tougher. Chicago
should follow the lead of street. This is significant be-
New York City, Trump’s ad-
ministration has said, and cause there has been a
crack down on even the
smallest offenses. growing concern that as
It turns out Chicago Po-
lice Superintendent Eddie officers become more de-
Johnson visited the New
York Police Department pendent on technology,
weeks before the Trump
administration advice. But they are more reluctant to
what he gleaned from a
city that has achieved long get out of their squad cars.
term success in fighting
crime was more nuanced “You are never going to
than a Trump-inspired po-
lice crackdown. get the community to like
Johnson came home with
ideas aimed at increas- you or trust you if all you did
ing community trust by
using technology to get was race by at 30 mph and
Chicago police officers
out of their squad cars, get out of your cars only to
and putting new cadets in
neighborhoods to walk the jack somebody up,” said
streets and talk to locals.
“We are only as strong as Jim Bueermann, president
the faith the community
has in us,” Johnson said. of the Police Foundation,
Gaining that community
trust will be a tall order a Washington, D.C.-based
in a city suffering from a
toxic brew of rising violent research organization. “It is
crime in some of its poorest
neighborhoods along with absolutely important to get
anger at police after the
release in 2015 of a video them (officers) out of their
showing a white police of-
ficer shooting black teen- cars.”
ager Laquan McDonald
16 times. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson speaks with residents of Chicago. Superintendent In two of Chicago’s most
That lack of faith has had Johnson visited New York to learn how it has achieved success in fighting crime. Johnson came
grave consequences in home with ideas aimed at increasing community trust by using technology to get Chicago police violent police districts
Chicago where many officers out of their squad cars and putting new cadets in neighborhoods to walk the streets.
people living in high-crime where the technology was
neighborhoods are reluc- (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford)
tant to help police solve introduced last month,
the number of shootings
dropped dramatically
according to a Univer- cracking down on minor dropped 20 percent in compared to February
sity of Chicago Crime Lab offenses championed by 2016 from the year before.
study. In New York, police then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Since his visit to New York, 2016 — 60 percent in one
solve about 70 percent of That policy helped drive Johnson has begun apply-
homicides. the number of homicides ing what he learned about and 40 percent in the
“We need them (witness- down in one decade from community policing with
es) to come forward and more than 2,200 a year to some encouraging results. other. Johnson was also
give us the information fewer than 700. In New York, the depart-
so we can put these bad Since then, the number ment started giving offi- impressed with how rookie
guys in jail,” Johnson said. of homicides in New York cers smartphones that are
In one example of Chica- has continued to decline. equipped with policing officers in New York are
go’s dilemma, the police In January the police de- apps linked to federal and
department is struggling partment announced that state databases. Statistics assigned to more experi-
to draft a new policy on there had been a near re- show the officers are rely-
the use of force. An Oc- cord low 335 homicide in ing on those phones more enced mentors around the
tober proposal prompted 2016 — less than half the and more.
concern from the police tally in Chicago, which has In Chicago, those phones city. Trainees are pulled
union that the restrictions less than half the popula- are part of a strategy that
were so tight officers would tion. And New York has includes sensors installed from the academy to
put themselves in danger done this with a lighter po- around neighborhoods
to comply. A new draft re- licing touch. that alert officers immedi- spend a week at a pre-
leased Tuesday would give The NYPD has been mak- ately where and when a
police more latitude in de- ing a targeted effort to gun is fired and a comput- cinct house, in a patrol car
ciding when to fire their repair damaged relation- er system that takes infor-
weapons, which pleased ships with minority com- mation about arrests, 911 and then walk the beat
the police union but munities. Use of the “stop- calls, gang activity and
prompted concern from and-frisk” tactic that dis- other data and predicts over a nine-week period.
The goal is to get those of-
ficers into the community
to meet people and learn
how to interact with them.
“Police officers are giv-
ing their cellphone num-
bers and email addresses
to residents so that they
can have a constant dia-
logue,” New York Mayor
Bill de Blasio said after a
speech in Chicago on
March 3.q
