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Occupational Hazards
Why is it that nobody wants this job? Or nobody wants to do this job?
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
"Dangerously low" fails to accurately gauge the manpower outage in the 11th District. Fewer cars patrol the streets than ever before. During the day, many of the beat cars go 99. Some of the cars out there come in and wait an hour to go out at night with two officers. A shooting or a bad accident, even a house fire, pulls in cars to handle traffic, protect crime scenes or transport victims to the hos- pital, leaving not enough to respond to other calls.
And 011 had the most homicides in the City last year.
“There isn’t really anything good about being 99 on days in 011, but at least we have a good amount of officers working days who have a good amount of time
on the job,” reports Bert Munguia, the Lodge 7 011 unit rep. “But that still does not fill the void of officers on the watch. And if something horrible happens, it holds down the district. Once you clear everything, then you have a backlog of so many things that they try to play catch- up. And it’s nearly impossible.”
Chicago Police Officers have become too well-versed in doing more with less, but now they are being asked to do the impossible. Like in the 6th District, where some nights, they have a total of 12 officers on the street.
They arrive at work, and they have to go right to work with each officer han- dling up to 20 calls a night of house alarms, business alarms, domestics and the like. The workload has resulted from what many beat cops facetious-
ly describe as one of the Department’s ingenious inventions: community safe- ty teams (CSTs), which have drained so many districts of their proper manpower.
“Because of the numbers, we feel like ‘hell, no’ in terms of pulling people and other stuff,” confides Mark Andrasco, the third watch rep in 006. “We got six cars down, you’re the only car available and you’re going to do a traffic stop? That’s not safe. Nobody’s available. Everybody’s on other stuff. And any call can blow up at any time.”
Worst I’ve ever seen it
Consequently, a sentiment has been reverberating through the districts that, with regard to the people who want this job, they're few and far. It doesn’t matter
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SPECIAL REPORT