Neither candidate has the answer to CPD's woes
Hiring civilians and employing cadets is where the answers lie
It is safe to say that public safety is at the top of list of concerns for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Chicagoans. In response to that worry, both Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas, the candidates for mayor, have made that issue one of the largest planks in their platforms.
Most residents see public safety and policing as synonymous. Both men have chosen opposing solutions to increasing public safety. Unfortunately, neither is viable.
When we closely examine the solutions each has proffered it is easy to see they are attempting to sell a shell game. Maybe that is the issue though; we are not supposed to closely examine what they are tell us.
Let’s start with Vallas’ idea. The sweetheart of the Fraternal Order of Police has pushed the notion of bringing cops out of retirement, hand them a few shortcuts, as in training requirements and put them back on the street. Between 2018 and 2020 more than 1,374 officers took retirement.
A lot of us, maybe all of us know cops who have retired and have taken a second job. In just about every case that post-retirement job is nowhere near as demanding or dangerous as being a full-time CPD cop. Many of the cops who don’t take a new job can be found in some sunshine-laden state doing much of nothing or pursuing hobbies. There is absolutely no motivation for either cohort to leave their current lifestyle to return to a city where neer do wells don’t seem to give a second thought to shooting or killing the police.
Throw in the harsh winters, legislators’ boundless fondness for higher taxes, and a pension crisis and the appeal of working for CPD again just doesn’t make sense. However, Vallas tells us he has the inside track on how to make it happen.
Johnson’s offering is far less pie-in-the-sky but seriously flawed nonetheless. I am not sure if someone gave him this bad advice or he came up with the idea to add 200 detectives to the CPD. He wants those 200 to come from within the ranks of current officers, and that’s the problem. If Johnson is elected he will face intense scrutiny from the news media, political opponents and much of the community over his defund the police statements he made and later recanted. It will be political suicide for him to even consider reducing CPD’s budget or overtime allocation when he recommends his budget to the city council.
Even those of us not particularly strong in math can figure out if The Chicago Police Department today is down approximately 1,700 officers from its 2019 level of 13,353; and you move 200 to detective about all that is happening is the payroll has increased with the higher salaries, and there still are not enough cops on the street. There is the possibility that more detectives could help result in more cases being solved. However, would the department bring more cases if there are fewer beat cops- I seriously doubt it.
Right now, we can’t be certain if the head of the FOP is selling “wolf tickets” or if there was some veracity to his threat that 1,000 cops would quit if Johnson is elected. True or not, it is something that city, county and state officials need to have a contingency plan for.
Most likely because both candidates were trying to appease the FOP neither mentioned what is a plausible solution-bring in cadets and civilians to handle some of the clerical and non-police work officers are currently doing. Such a move would not cause an incredible bump in the budget and the quality of work would not suffer. And the cadets would be in the pipeline to become full-fledged officers.
It is key to keep in mind that the candidates are attempting to deal with a problem that is none of their doing. In fact, neither of them had a role in city government when the police staffing issue first reared its ugly head. In 2015, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel said during a D.C. meeting with the FBI that cops had become “fetal” for fear of being on the 6 o’clock news for how they interacted with civilians. He went on to say that Chicago cops in many instances avoid making some arrests.
Emanuel’s successor, current Mayor Lori Lightfoot watched CPD morale swirl in the toilet when she initially fired the superintendent for lying to her and subsequently lost much of the department’s institutional memory when many of the superintendent’s underlings decided to resign in protest.
Since then Lightfoot has struggled severely to put the right leadership in place at CPD. Her idea to bring in an interim superintendent from Los Angeles did nothing for morale or crime solving. There was rejoicing when he headed by to the Left Coast. Lightfoot exacerbated her earlier problem by going outstate again, this time to Dallas to find a superintendent. He expounded on her gaffe from day one citing how he would cap the city’s murders, and missed the target by a wide margin. As an outsider, this superintendent was always operating on his heels as he was under constant criticism from the community and sometimes from his own officers. In May 2020, CPD officers issued a vote of no confidence (in Brown) to Lightfoot.
A nationwide search is on for a new superintendent. We should expect that if Vallas is elected mayor, the FOP for all practical purposes will select the next superintendent. A Johnson win, given his lack of experience in managing thousands of employees, could find us on the same merry-go-round Lightfoot introduced.