Getting our police officers into the right jobs at the places where they can do most to stop crime is the next big step in bringing Chicago violence down to the level we see today in cities such as New York.
The Chicago Police Department will soon announce a new policy on resource allocation designed to do that. The policy was developed in conjunction with Matrix Consulting Group under the federal court police reform decree, so it has court enforcement power behind its implementation. But Chicago doesn’t need a federal judge to tell us we should station our police officers to best prevent violence and to investigate offenders when it happens.
Chicago Police Department Superintendent Larry Snelling has already demonstrated the leadership capacity, and he has the public and police confidence needed to implement the new policy. Unfortunately, Chicago has a long tradition of political actors — mayors and aldermen — interfering with law enforcement decisions on resource allocation. That political interference should end now. If there are signs of it coming back to prevent Snelling from implementing the new policy, the Illinois attorney general’s lawyers responsible for enforcement of the decree and Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer should act quickly to stop it.
Even with Snelling’s leadership strength, and no political interference, implementation of the new policy will be a challenge internally and externally. The full extent of the challenge won’t be known until the specifics of the new policy are announced, but some issues are clear in advance.
Inside the Police Department, many officers will have to accept new jobs and new locations, and some won’t like it. Some officers will move out of headquarters jobs into districts. That will happen because civilian personnel can take over headquarters jobs where sworn police officers are not required and because headquarters staffing now is simply excessive. Charlie Beck, the outstanding former Los Angeles police chief who served here as interim superintendent for five months after then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired Eddie Johnson, began to transfer officers from headquarters out to police districts. But after Beck left, and in the face of internal resistance, his successor David Brown stopped the transfers.
Chicago has historically underallocated police resources to our highest crime neighborhoods, and some officers now serving in low-crime areas will have to move to high-crime districts. Forces within the department opposed to that shift have historically allied with aldermen who have bargained over police officers as though they were perks or prizes to be awarded to those with the greatest political strength. Everyone must now accept that these are law enforcement decisions to be made by Snelling and other top commanders in the interests of citywide safety. Some of these transfers may run into conflicts with the existing police union contract; if that happens, Pallmeyer should not hesitate to use her power to subordinate those contractual provisions to the requirements of constitutional policing under the court decree.
For all Chicago police officers, the pain of complying with the new policy will have an enormous positive tradeoff in advancing the objective that is the central reason they accept the day-in-and-day-out risks and burdens of their job: increased effectiveness in preventing and prosecuting crime.
For Chicagoans outside the Police Department, the changes will also present challenges. Residents of very low-crime communities may have fewer officers in their police districts, even after some headquarters staffers are shifted and distributed around the city. The new policy is being designed to assure the security of every community, and citizens must now look to Snelling and the police leadership, not to aldermen or other politicians, for assurance that they will continue to be safe in their neighborhoods. Residents of every neighborhood will be safer as these officers move around the city since most criminal activity has its sources in the high-crime areas where more focus from an increase in officers can reduce that crime.
High-crime neighborhoods will see more officers in their districts — something overwhelmingly supported by every survey of residents in those communities. There is one qualification: Residents want police officers they trust. District commanders will have the job of making certain, through the workplace values they cultivate and reward and through active engagement with community leaders, that the deployment of new officers advances Snelling’s announced initiative to make community-oriented policing a department-wide culture in Chicago.
The police reform decree has been in effect for more than six years, and there has been criticism and concern about the pace of implementation. There is no excuse for delay now in beginning the implementation of the new resource allocation policy that will inevitably take some months to complete. Unlike many other elements of the decree, the new policy will be specific. Snelling will know what he must do, and the court should make sure he has the authority to do it.
Delay would also threaten Chicago’s current positive track of violence reduction. Homicides in the city have come down from over 800 in 2021 to just over 400 in the year just ended. But New York City, which as about three times our population, had roughly 300 homicides last year, and many other cities have a comparable violence level. Those violence rates often came down remarkably fast once the improvement began, and more effective policing was the common element in that progress.
A full and speedy effort to put our police officers where they can best do their jobs should now be our highest priority.
John Schmidt is senior counsel at Mayer Brown LLP and served from 1994 to 1997 as associate attorney general at the Justice Department, where his responsibilities included oversight of the community policing program and of civil rights actions against police departments and other public agencies under the 1994 Federal Crime Act.
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