Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, please take your seats.
Adhere to the rules that have been published and read to you over and
over again. There will be zero tolerance today.
You will follow the directions of the chair.
If not, you will be asked to leave.
So at this time, please take your seats.
Please take your seats. Please take your seats. Thank you.
City of Chicago City Council Rules of Conduct for Public Meetings,
2023 to 2027. Pursuant to the Chicago
City Council Rules of Order and Procedure, Rule 49,
the Sergeant at Arms sets forth the
following...
Including in metal can-
Good morning.
Committee on Budget and Government Operations will come to order.
We will begin today with public comment.
Today, we have 16
people for public comment. We will do all 16
individuals for two minutes per person
Instead of the three minutes, we'll do two minutes to go into our
30-minute timeframe. The first individual we will
have is Taiwan Sims.
Mr. Sims, do you wish to speak? It's a yes or no question.
Okay, you're up.
Mr. Sims, you're up.
You have two minutes.
Mr. Sims, are you speaking?
Okay.
All right. Could you begin the clock for Mr. Sims, please?
Okay, because, I mean...
Okay.
You can put two minutes on the clock, sir.
On that clock.
Huh?
Put two minutes on that clock.
Okay.
Sergeant at Arms, could you please maintain order for this room, please?
We've maintained order. We've maintained order for more than 11 months.
We've maintained order as we watched you disrespect us, sir.
We've maintained order. We've did it all.
I know that you want to make me seem like a disrupt-
The mic is not on, sir. The mic. And then, I'm sorry, sir, why you doing this to
me, Mr. Sergeant? Why you don't check that man?
This our First Amendment right. This our
constitutional right. No, it's not my turn.
Stop.
Go away.
And I think that she ought to go.
Ought to go. Okay. And I--
No. Yeah. Oh. I don't
think that- Why don't you turn that
mic or submit?
Thank you,
Mr. Sims.
Next, we'll have Scarlett Johnson.
Mr. Sims, if you would please be quiet, take your seat, or
you will be asked to leave.
You had your opportunity.
Sergeant at Arms,
you please maintain order in the room.
Scarlett Johnson.
You've had your opportunity.
Hello. Hey.
Okay.
Hold on. Could you please remove the gentleman from the room, sir?
Your time has expired, sir.
Ms. Jackson.
Thank you, Ms. Jackson.
Go ahead.
Hello, my name is-
Scarlett Johnson?
Hello, my name is Scarlett Johnson.
I am here to oppose the $71 million increase to
CPD's proposed
budget. I am with the Chicago Alliance, that is Scarlett,
C-A-R-L-E-T.
We need-
Scarlett, just hold up a second while they...
Could you all close that rear door, please?
Could you close the door, please?
Could you- Could you all close the door, please, so we can continue with this?
Could you all please close the door, officers?
Thank you, Lieutenant.
Could you restart the sound, please?
You may proceed
Hello, my name is Scarlet,
S-C-A-R-L-E-T. I am here with the Chicago
Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and here to
oppose the $71 million increase to the CPD's proposed
budget.
While the Chicago Police Department is getting an
increase, departments like the Department of Public Health and the Fire Department
are getting massively cut.
We can't be giving the
police free rein to steal from all
of the other much-needed places that benefit the
community. We need to eliminate positions like the
SWAT marine helicopters, the bomb squad.
We can't be spending money on trying to hire cops.
Could save at least $10 million there.
And we also need to complete the Promise Workforce Allocation Study.
If we don't know where all this money's going, we're arguing with bad information,
and if
the CPB doesn't know where the budget's going, I don't even know why they need more
of it. That is all I have to say. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment.
Next, we will have Reese Johnson, followed by Otis Buckley.
Ain't no show.
You better put some respect back, boy.
You better put some-
Ms. Jackson. Ms. Jackson, please.
Good morning, everyone. I am Reese Johnson from North Lawndale, and I am a youth
peacekeeper with GoodKids MadCity.
I'm here to tell you all that there is hope in our city through the youth.
This past summer, we worked with the alderperson Jesse Fuentes' office
and the Department of Family Support Services, and created 100 peacekeeping jobs
for everyone,
especially teenagers. Teenagers like me, who are traditionally
villainized and criminalized. We collectively get blamed for violence,
carjackings, and teen trends. But when we do violence prevention work
and host peace circles in several CPS schools on the South Side of
Chicago, it's silence
and no support. Now it's time for a change in the narrative.
Now it's time to invest in our children and communities instead of investing in
more policing. We need money to go towards the Peace Book so we
can lower our violence and promote peace.
We need money to go towards treatment, not trauma, so youth can
have access to free mental health services in the city to
help us process our trauma and break the cycles of violence.
We need housing, jobs, and free, affordable, regular healthcare for
youth.
That's what will keep our community safe.
Pass the Peace Book and treatment, not trauma, now. Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Next, we will have Otis Buckley, followed by Jasmine Smith.
Yes, my name is Otis Buckley. I'm here on behalf of Chicago Alliance
Against Racists and Political Repression, as well as Total
Blackout for Reform.
Some concerns that I have. One,
all funds should be cut for crooked cops.
I'm a firm believer there are some good cops, but there are some bad ones.
Taxpayers should not have to pay for rotten apples.
If they're a bad cop, let them foot their own criminal bills and not force
taxpayers to pay for the torturers that are
terrorizing them. We shouldn't have to pay to be tortured.
We should pay for what we're supposed to get, which is
protection, not torture.
CompStat. CompStat needs to be ended.
There is no way a police officer should waste their time sitting in the
bushes trying to pull somebody over who's doing five, 10 miles over the
speed limit, when we have murderers running around the city of Chicago.
There are other things that they could be doing as opposed to writing a
speeding ticket, like arresting somebody who just raped a little old
lady, beat up a child. There are far more important things to
do than give somebody a speeding ticket.
Workforce allocation study. I think every single taxpayer
in America, let alone the great state of Illinois, the great city of
Chicago, should know where every single dollar is
going that is given to those who are sworn to protect and
serve us. Is the money being used to protect and serve us,
or is it being used to beat and brutalize us?
We want to know these things, and I feel we have a right to know them.
Thank you.
Next, we will have Jasmine Smith, followed by Gabrielle Miller.
Good morning, everyone. And thank you, Alderman Irvin, for allowing everyone
to speak and not doing the lottery thing.
I am activist Jasmine Smith with Chicago Alliance Against Racists and Political
Repression. It is an awful shame that superintendent is not here when
he's the one that proposed a lot of these changes within the budget
for the CPD.
Just a few things that I just want to address, that the City of Chicago
spends millions each year paying
misconduct settlements to people who've been harmed by the CPD.
The city of Chicago spends millions each year
paying misconduct settlements to people who've been harmed
by CPD. The people of Chicago should
not
have to foot the bill for the misconduct of Chicago Police
Department.
In a year
when the budget is tight, an increase in spending on the helicopter
unit, SWAT team recruitment, and communications for CPD
is unjustifiable
I just want to urge all of the aldermen to really...
I know it's a lot of aldermen that still haven't took a look at our
referendum. Take a look at this referendum because we need
accountability. We need to have a say over the way the
police is policing our communities.
We need to police our communities, and take our
referendum out of the rules committee and put it in a public safety
committee where it belongs, where it rightfully belongs.
That should not be negotiated. It seem like the
council, these aldermen, we are y'all constituents.
We should not have to come down here begging and pleading with y'all to do
what's right by us. All of this money that's being argued
about,
it's a lot of money being mishandled and misplaced, and even stolen.
You guys need to put the money in a community and where it should
be to help, and protect, and serve the
constituents.
Thank you for your comments.
Gabriel Miller, followed by Kofi
Ademolu.
Good morning.
My name is Gabriel Miller. I'm here with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and
Political Repression. We're a mass defense organization that's one
chapter of many across the United States, part of the National Alliance
Against Racist and Political Repression.
And I'm here to oppose, to speak out against the
proposed $71 million increase to an already bloated
CPD budget.
Right? We're speaking to you from what is known as the torture
capital of the United States, a city with a long history of police
crimes, a long history of paying millions and
millions upon millions and millions of dollars,
like Jasmine said,
to settle in cases where police commit crimes against the communities that they're
supposed to serve and protect.
So, we need to oppose all the increases to this budget.
Money for a helicopter makes no sense. Right?
Money for overtime and wages for these cops to brutalize our
communities makes no sense. What we do
need is a plan for community safety, and the communities in this
city, the communities of working class and oppressed people have a plan.
The people's plan for community safety is what we need.
We need the referendum for community power over policing so that
everyday working-class people can determine who polices our
communities and how they're policed.
We need the Peace Book ordinance, we need Treatment Not
Trauma,
and we need an end to pretextual traffic stops like the one that led to the murder
of Dexter Reid.
So these communities, we're coming to you with a plan.
We're not just saying, "This stuff isn't working,"
although it isn't working. We're saying we know what needs to be done.
And I like standing here giving public comment about the budget because I know that
once we win the referendum for community power over policing, I won't have to sit
here and beg for the aldermen to do what we know is right, because we're going to
win that power for ourselves. We're going to win a directly elected body so
that we can have a representative negotiating this budget.
Thank you for your comments.
Next we will have Kofi Ademolu, followed
by Akeisha Lee.
All right. Good morning, esteemed City Council.
And brother Irvin, it's Ademola, but thank you for trying to get that right.
Say that again, sir. My apologies.
No, it's Ademola.
Ademola?
Yes, sir.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. All right.
So I'm here just to say, as a resident of Woodlawn in the 20th
Ward, as someone who conducts business in the Third Ward as
well as the Fourth Ward, supporting a lot of different community initiatives,
especially supporting a lot of young people doing restorative practices,
we need to make sure that we are not cutting money from the summer
programs. I'm hearing that $10 million is being considered
being taken away from youth employment and summer programs.
That's just completely unacceptable.
I'm hearing that the universal basic income for
poor working-class people was being considered taken.
We know that people need those funds to help pay for their groceries, pay for
their bills. We know people are living check to check or even less than that, so we
need to make sure those monies stay.
If anything, more money needs to be increased by that.
As I heard earlier, I just want to state some facts and numbers.
From over the past four years, you all
have sat here and had to pay over $387 million
towards police misconduct and
cases where they've committed violence against community members.
That is just completely unacceptable.
You all should not be paying taxpayer money to cover up
for violent crimes. We get it. People need to be compensated for the harms that
they have experienced, but we need a much better practice to
hold police accountable, but also to make sure our communities have the resources
that we need. So I'm here to say that I'm in support of
making sure that
jobs that don't need to be filled by officers, that vacancies need,
that money needs to go towards public initiatives like the Peace Book, like
Treatment Not Trauma, like the universal basic income, and summer
programming. So let's make sure we continue to put money in public safety,
and invest in our communities, and hold police accountable. Thank you.
Thank you, sir
Next we'll have Akisha Lee, followed by Rania
Jackson.
Good morning, y'all. My name is Akisha. I'm a resident of Bronzeville.
I'm here today in opposition of the proposed $71 million increase
CPD's budget, and in support of efforts to cut CPD's budget, protect
transparency, and end pretextual traffic stops.
Honestly, y'all, it's disappointing that this body is even considering increasing
CPD's budget in light of their behavior.
CPD claims that increase in funding will address a need for increased wages,
but they can free up some money by firing the eight Oath Keeper cops still
employed by CPD.
So our residents are clearly feeling the negative impact of CPD's budget
eclipsing the budget of public health department, the fire department, and cultural
affairs. And many Chicagoans are doing more than just complaining.
They're working to meet the needs of their neighbors and themselves by creating
mutual aid programs, CVR programs, other not-for-profits.
The work they're doing is moving the needle forward on addressing the root causes
of violence without dehumanizing people.
When they seek public funding to sustain and expand their work, they're told
funding is not available because it's being held hostage by the FOP
and CPD.
So when you talk to cops, they explain the reason for their failure is not enough
funding and community involvement. But how many years will we accept this excuse?
Any other program with the history of ineffectiveness like CPD would be
minimized and phased out for a more effective program.
Please stop this budget increase and provide a road for sustainability for
programs that actually ensure safety for all Chicagoans. Thank you for your time.
Thank you, ma'am.
Next, we'll have Rania Jackson, followed by Jessica Jackson.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Rania Jackson.
I'm a youth organizer here to advocate for the Peace Book ordinance.
The Peace Book is about giving Chicago's young people and communities a real
chance at safety and opportunity.
Since 2019, when JKMC first introduced the Peace Book, we've seen this
city spend over $10 billion on Chicago Police Department.
That's around $5 million a day of taxpayer money that could be directed
towards violence prevention, housing, education, and mental health services for
our youth. Imagine if we invested $5 million a day in Chicago's young
people. Imagine what our city would look like if we put that money into
opportunities and support instead of policing.
Why does Chicago keep pouring into policing when there's no clear evidence that it
makes our community safer? We know that mass incarceration often makes our
neighborhoods less safe, tearing families apart, destabilizing
communities. I'm speaking from personal experience, too.
When I was only 10 years old, I lost my brother to gun violence.
I found him lying in the alley, gunshots wound to his chest.
I remember the trauma, the loss, the feeling of being left to pick up the pieces
alone. We didn't need more police.
We needed support, mentors, and resources that help prevent tragedies like this
from happening in the first place.
And so when alderpeople ask, "If we don't invest in CPD, how will our communities
be safe?" The answer is clear. Invest in us, Chicago's young
people. This past summer, JKMC worked with the alderperson Jesse
Fuentes and the city to expand youth peacekeeping jobs, and it was
transformative. Over 900 young people applied for the 100
peacekeeping jobs. But we had to turn away so many people because
of limited funding. Meanwhile, CPD spends $16
million on recruiting people into policing.
Chicago youth are eager to help and have shown they're more than capable of
making a difference with the right training and mentorship.
But we were stretched thin. We had to ask adult supporters for donations to
cover basics like food and transportation for our youth, while CPD spends over
$27 million on training alone. Young people participating in
positive loitering, gathering, socializing, and building community had a
real impact, creating spaces with youth and joy.
Thank you for your comments. Next, we'll have Jessica Jackson, followed by George
Blakemore.
The bottom line is you're not going to be able to do anything about
crime, you're not going to be able to do anything about policing
until you get these crooked judges.
Until you're able and willing to get
crooked judges,
then everything that you all doing here is for naught.
It doesn't matter if people get shot down by the police and go to
court if the judges are corrupt.
It doesn't matter if the police are brought up on misconduct or whatever if
the judges are corrupt.
Every policy that you all putting in here, everything you put up on
that wall, on those screens, it's for naught if the
judges are corrupt. And you all know that the
judges are corrupt because I've come in here over and over and over
again about my case, about how the judges are committing
fraud and perjury right over there in the Daley
Center, in the probate division. They're stealing people's
property. Now, you're looking down, Jason Erin.
I bet you ain't writing none of that down. I bet you didn't.
I bet you not going go and look for none of these judges.
I bet you you're not going to ask me to see the documentation
that I have to prove that Judge McGuire,
Judge Gallagher,
Public Administrator leader Leah
Chikosi,
Louis G. Apostle, Timothy Evans himself.
I bet you you're not going to ask me to see them documents.
I bet you you're going to act like I didn't even stand here and say this today,
because you're not going to go for them judges.
You're going to keep on keeping Black people, keeping the citizens, period, on this
hamster wheel. On this hamster wheel.
Keep us frustrated, keep us upset, keep us mad, because you're not
going to get to the bottom of the problem.
See how I start talking to you right now to distract you so that you can't listen
to a real problem and get real results? It's the judges.
It's the judges. Get these judges. You want to stop crime?
Get these ju-
Thank you for your comments. Next, we'll have Mr.
George Blakemore, followed by Elizabeth Rochford.
While Black.
Talking while Black.
Living while Black.
A Black policeman. Have you ever heard
of a Black policeman shooting a white man,
a white woman,
a white boy, or a white girl? Somebody say, "Yes, this happened
one time in America. Up in Minnesota, a Black police shot
a white woman." It's not going to happen
because these Black people know better.
They know that white lives matter.
These Blacks know that white lives matter.
And you sitting up here, having the audacity.
This is supposed to be the police board.
Where's the superintendent?
Where are the people?
We have poor Black leadership. No
Black leadership. I came from down south.
They use the word N word. Up here, these white
folks don't use N word. They treat you like one.
They treat you like one. I've never heard an
alderman use "n****r,"
but they treat you like one. Go to your neighborhood.
Community police. We need Black police in our
community to police us. Can't you-- Oh, I was
cursing. This thick, fat man right there going to say,
"We going to have a lottery." I got on these people, I say, "Tell him to
stop him. He's out of control. Fat, Black man.
Stop him." So he decided not to use the lottery, throwing people
out. So on the plantation, the white man made a
n****r. You have a n****r alderman, a n****r pr-
Mr. Blakemore. Mr. Blakemore, could you stop? Turn the mic off.
You're not going to use that type of language
in this room, sir.
Sir?
Yeah. Sir, you're not going to use that type of language in here. I'm sorry.
You going to make me the problem. Go ahead and kick me out.
I don't give a damn.
I'm not kicking you out, sir. I'm telling you that we're not going to have that
type of profane language
being done. That's all.
And read in this Bible. When I come down these settlements, young lady,
it's not going to happen. A Black policeman won't pull his
gun out and shoot a
.
Thank you for your comments. Next, we'll have Elizabeth Rochford,
followed by John Cartanzara.
From this front.
And the Lord my
God.
Good morning. My name is Elizabeth Rochford, and I'm a 17th District Police
District Councilor, and I'm here today to oppose
this budget. We held a joint
multi-district budget meeting about a week ago and
heard from our constituents that they feel that this is a morally
indefensible budget.
They think that there should not be cuts to constitutional
policing and community policing.
I listened to the independent monitor and
consent decree hearing where the plaintiffs, the
judge, the monitor, and the AG's office said
that the cuts to constitutional policing
would devastate the progress, that little progress that we've
made on the consent decree. So I beg you to
reconsider that. We heard at a CCPSA
meeting last night that there is
money on the table for helicopters and helicopter training.
I don't know how that fits into community policing.
And we also heard that there is money in this budget
for forensic accreditation. It's my understanding that
that forensic work is being done elsewhere already.
I urge you to find out if that money would actually
save the city because they wouldn't be using an outside contractor,
or whether that is an additional cost to us.
If it's an additional cost, then we believe that that needs to
be kept being done by an outside vendor or
whoever is currently doing it. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment.
Next, we'll have John Cartanzara, followed by our final speaker,
who will be Robert Schultz.
Morning, Mr. Chairman, committee members.
I will start with saying I'm a little disappointed that the superintendent is not
sitting in this public speaking forum to hear the
concerns of Chicagoans
at a Chicago Police budget hearing. Nonetheless, onward we go.
Officer Enrique Martinez,
say his name,
because he died trying to defend this city and every single one of you in this
room.
I will just let you know,
like I did at the end of the meeting yesterday, I strongly encourage every alderman
here to encourage the mayor to call Officer
Enrique Martinez's family and expresses
condolences, which he has not done yet, and acknowledge the
fact that the family does not want him at the wake
services or the funeral. He refuses to call because he
doesn't want to hear the words firsthand.
You all can make that happen and should make that happen.
Enrique deserves that level of respect from each and every one of you, even if he
doesn't want to give it to the family. Onward we go.
I'll give you one simple line budget item that you can cut.
The first deputy superintendent, because apparently the superintendent refuses to
have a number two. That's a $260,000 salary.
That's again in the police budget this year.
Why have it if it's not being filled? It's just sitting there vacant.
If he doesn't want a first deputy, so be it. Cut that.
There's $260,000 right there. But I feel the need
to enlighten some people here. Helicopter, you talked about lawsuits and all the
money in lawsuits that these aldermen routinely settle without even a fight.
Helicopters provide air support from above for vehicle
chases, which we can no longer chase vehicles.
It limits the liability to the city when someone could possibly get hit by a car.
So absolutely need a helicopter, and the better helicopters
we need. SWAT absolutely defuses mental health situations.
You got someone that doesn't want to come out of a house, who's going to get them?
You? I don't think so. And lastly, let me tell you this.
We talked about a officer, a Black officer. Say his name.
Officer-
Thank
you, Mr. Catanzara. Thank you for your comments.
Our final speaker is Robert Schultz.
Good morning. My name is W. Robert Schultz III.
Today, I'm part of the Free2Move Coalition.
I've been here in Chicago for 35 years.
Police accountability wasn't a big issue until I moved here
because of many problems over the many years.
But today I'm here to focus on one issue, and that's
pretextual traffic stops. As part of the Free2Move
Coalition, we're urging that the city looks at the
strategy of pretextual stops because it consumes
precious city resources.
We have many facts to share, but I only have
less than 90 seconds, so I won't delve into them too much.
Also, our second point is that we believe that there
can be a more efficient use of resources, and
here is an opportunity to change the practice of pretextual
traffic stops. Lastly, CPD should
reallocate resources
used for pretextual traffic stops and direct those
towards community priorities. I've
lived in several different communities of Chicago and worked in many of
them, and
I
think I can speak accurately to this.
Last year, the CPD made over 5,000 traffic stops,
and that represents a huge investment in time and energy.
We believe if we can stop this practice, we can
use police resources to solve other
issues. So I only have 20 seconds left, so
I just urge you again to look at the issue of pretextual traffic
stops and take every action possible to end
that practice because it's a waste of time and resources. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Schultz, for your comments.
Committee will stand at ease for a few minutes while--
Are the balance of them here? They're all here now? Okay.
We'll stand at ease while they
come.
Good
morning.
Today we have before us the Chicago Police Department.
We want to welcome Superintendent Snelling and his
team. Before we begin, though, we would like to offer our
condolences to the department on the loss of Officer Martinez.
I know this is a
trying time for the department, as in any circumstance such as this.
For the record, we did want you to come after
services were performed next week.
However,
the superintendent asked to come today, so that is why he is here today and not
next week as we had originally planned.
So that's just for the record. And again, our condolences
to the department on the loss of Officer Martinez.
We will begin today with a
quick analysis from our director of COFA, followed by
the superintendent's opening statement and introduction of the members that are
here in the well, as well as those that are in the box.
Director Oda Gray, please proceed.
Thank you.
Chairman Irving,
Vice Chairman Lee, Alderpersons,
Superintendent Snelling, and guests, good morning.
My name is Janice Oda Gray. I'm the director of COFA, and let's
start with a snapshot of CPS fiscal year '25
budget.
D.
The FY proposed budget is
2.1 billion,
an increase of 3% over the FY24 revised
budget.
Personnel services have increased by 3% in the
FY25 budget from 1.711 billion in
FY24 to 1.769
billion in the current FY25 recommendation.
The full-time equivalence is down by 456
FTEs.
There were 14,112
in '24, and currently 13,656.
Contractual services have decreased in FY25 by
84%, in part due to D&C expenses,
IDOT license readers, and a reduction in the UOSA grant
recognized in '25.
Purposes as specified, account 9200
decreased by 1.89 million
from 7.8 million in
fiscal year '24 to 6.0 million in fiscal year
'25 due to consent decree.
The Chicago Police Department is 86.6% corporate
funded, and personnel services for the Chicago Police
Department, they're budgeted at 1.8 billion.
Non-personnel budgeted at
319.7 million. Thank you.
Thank you, Director Gray. Superintendent Snelling, please proceed.
First of all, good morning, everybody.
Great.
Good morning, Chairman Irving.
And to the City Council members, thank you for having us.
Before I begin,
I'd like to thank everybody across the city and the
state, the nation,
for the outpouring
of condolences for the family of Officer Martinez,
who was killed in the line of duty.
The most difficult thing
that I've had to do in this position
is tell a family
that they've lost a family member, especially as brutally
as this young 26-year-old officer with three years on the
job aspiring to protect the city
lost his life.
It's a tough situation for the family,
and
just to hear an outpouring of support
is helpful to the family, as much as it can be.
We can't bring the officer back, but the outreach
was just overwhelming, and I'd just like to thank everybody for that.
A line of duty death is a difficult reminder
of the work that police officers are doing out there and the danger that they face
every single day.
If you've never
gone to a job,
if you've never stopped somewhere where someone is reaching for something and
you're not sure what they're reaching for, you don't know what that danger is.
There needs to be a level of education provided to the public on what it
is that police officers do on a daily basis and the challenges that they
face. It's like anything else that we educate ourselves on or
we get experience doing.
It's really hard for me to sit behind a desk and decide or
determine how someone should have responded without having all of the
facts, or without having some type of experience
or some type of stress inoculation training that would give you a better
understanding of what that officer may be feeling at that very moment where he
or she feels that their lives are in danger or someone else's life is in
danger.
We have to be aware of that. It's very important to understand that, and
it's my duty as the superintendent and the leader of the Chicago Police
Department to make sure that we educate the public on what that
is.
And even as we mourn the death of Officer
Martinez,
our police officers are still out on the street working
They're still trying to keep the city safe.
Nearly 12,000 guns taken off the street this
year by our police officers.
Every encounter that an officer has with someone who is armed with a
gun has the potential to be a deadly encounter.
And when we look at the number of times that officers have taken guns off the
street and it didn't turn into a deadly encounter,
you should understand the amazing work that officers are doing
to stop violent offenders from robbing,
from shooting,
and from killing people in the city of Chicago.
Hopefully,
what just happened to our officer
is a reminder of the dangers that are out there.
As I said before, if the officers who go to the job to protect you
aren't safe,
it's going to be hard to keep anybody safe in this city.
So we have to get
to a level of accountability.
We have to make sure that we don't have people out here with guns, with switches,
that can turn a handgun into a fully automatic weapon,
discharge
double-digit shots in a second.
Those guns are designed for killing.
It's that simple. Those devices are designed for killing.
And we have to do
a much better job
of protecting our children,
protecting our citizens from these types of weapons and these types
of people who would use those weapons to take lives.
First of all, I'd like to introduce everyone that we have here today with me in the
box. We have the Chief of Patrol, John Hein,
our Chief of Detectives, Antonette Ursity,
Chief of the Bureau of Counterterrorism, Duane DeVries,
Chief of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, Yolanda Talley,
the Chief of Constitutional Policing and Reform, Angel Nevarez,
Deputy Chief in the Office of the First Deputy, Jill Stevens,
General Counsel, Scott Spears,
the Deputy Managing Director of Constitutional Policing and Reform, Allison
Clark-Henson,
Director of Community Policing, Glenn Brooks.
Right here to my right is Deputy Director in the
Office of the Superintendent, Ryan Fitzsimmons,
Assistant Director of Strategic Initiatives Division, Noe
Flores.
We also have Managing Deputy Director, Dan Casey, and Director Joy
Brown from the Office of Public Safety Administration.
Today,
you'll hear
about the successes of our public safety efforts, and you'll also
learn more about how we are allocating the resources that
we have. More importantly, we will lay out some
of the public safety challenges we face and how we
plan to address these challenges in our 2025
budget.
What I can promise you is that day in and day out,
no matter what, the men and women of the Chicago Police Department
will always protect the people of our city.
They've always put
the safety of others before their own
safety.
These officers go into some of the most volatile
situations,
not thinking about their own safety,
but the safety of others, the safety of children in our city.
Oftentimes, our officers are criticized,
and oftentimes they're also praised.
They hear a lot more criticism than they hear praise.
All in all, they still get back up, they go back out, and they do the job
because they understand the importance of keeping the city safe because they
see the dangers on the street every single day.
The influx of guns in our communities and the proliferation
of high-capacity weapons in the past few years
has made being a police officer an even more dangerous job.
Since 2020, 330 police officers have been shot at,
and 38 of which were shot, injured,
or killed. In the past four years, we have lost five officers
in the line of duty to the violence they worked to protect our city from.
Officer Ella French,
Officer Andres Vasquez Lasso, Officer
Ariana Preston,
Officer Luis Huesca,
and Officer Enrique Martinez, who we recently
lost
to gun violence.
Knowing the risk, our officers are continuing to take guns off our
streets and apprehend violent offenders, hurting our residents and
perpetuating an already devastating ripple effect of
trauma in our neighborhoods.
I know all of you who are sitting here today and understand that every
community and every neighborhood has its own set
of public safety concerns. On a daily basis, we're
balancing and addressing these concerns throughout 22 police
districts citywide.
We have to make sure the allocation of resources reflect the trends
we are seeing.
We've done a great job this past year of addressing problems head-on
as they arise, but we still have work to do.
As evidenced during the DNC,
no matter what challenges we are presented with, we will get the job
done with the highest levels of dedication and professionalism.
As we move forward
with reform efforts,
if anyone has any doubts that we have the ability
and our officers have the ability to step up
and police in the city of Chicago
with the utmost professionalism,
following the Constitution,
the DNC
should be representative of what it is that our officers
are capable of doing when we know that we have the right leadership in
place and that top-down trickle effect,
where the accountability starts with me.
I will never run from my responsibility, criticism, because I
don't fear it.
Criticism
just makes me better.
It makes you aware. It wakes us up. It makes us work harder,
work better.
I hear the complaints, I hear the concerns, I hear the
issues, and we're working to address those.
But at the same time,
I hear those same concerns coming from the officers who are going to be out there
protecting our city,
and they have to be heard.
So across the board, I'm listening to everyone.
My leadership team,
they have stepped up.
I couldn't ask for a better leadership team than we have right here.
They do the job that we need to make sure that this city is
safe,
and they're concerned about the well-being of our officers.
Wellness
is of the utmost importance to us.
When there was a spike in armed robberies earlier this year, the Bureau of
Detectives, Bureau of Patrol, and the Bureau of Counterterrorism worked together
to launch a citywide robbery task force.
Since that's happened,
we have seen a reduction
of about 1,400 robberies across our city.
So things are trending in the right direction. We still have work to do.
We've done this while driving down homicides and shootings year over
year, focusing on supporting the victims and families who have
experienced and continue to live with this trauma and violence.
Our Victim Services unit is focused on supporting and connecting
those affected by violence with resources to
facilitate healing.
The Bureau of Detectives Family Liaison Unit has also expanded
and solely worked to support the families of homicide victims,
and our detectives work to bring justice
to their cases. So far this year, our clearance rate
is at nearly 54%, the highest in 10 years.
This is part of a renewed effort to strengthen investigations
through restructured homicide teams and enhanced technology
in our area technology centers.
This 2025 budget also contains $2 million
that will be utilized to seek accreditation for our forensic
lab, which is vital to holding gun offenders accountable.
While our priority is the safety of our city,
we are also prioritizing our reform efforts.
We have set the foundation for reform, and we are a department in
transformation.
We've made a lot of progress and will continue
full steam ahead to fulfill the obligations of our consent
decree.
I know there's been a lot of concern around where we are with the
consent decree.
I've said from day one, the consent decree is not just
about reaching compliance with a document.
We put laws on the books
all the time and people break them.
This is an opportunity
to create the best possible department that we can for our officers, for our city
and for our citizens.
It's not just about a document.
It's about a culture change.
It's about a lifestyle, a way of life, and this is what we're working
toward.
We recently established
a new Office of Equity and Inclusion, which will be tasked with
ensuring our policies are equitable for all residents of
Chicago and building relationships with marginalized communities
in our city.
This office
will also be in charge of implementing our multi-year racial equity
action plan.
As we move forward in 2025, our goal remains the same,
to protect the people of the city of Chicago, no matter what.
But as our officers protect this city,
we have to protect them.
An officer who cannot protect himself
cannot protect you.
We have to make sure that our officers are safe, those who are putting their lives
on the line to make sure others are safe.
Our children,
the children in this city depend on us.
They depend on the officers. Our marginalized communities
depend on us.
We have a responsibility to keep them safe, and we will do so.
Our members have been able to take advantage of two newer
employee
assistance centers,
locations on the North Side and the South Side,
for better access for officers all across this city.
Wellness is extremely important.
If we send an officer out to the street
who is unwell
cognitively,
that officer is going to make mistakes
This is why,
number one,
our officers
are of the main concern.
Now, we talk about community, and you hear people talk about community a lot,
and our first priority is community.
As the Chicago Police Department, my first priority has to be the officers.
And the reason for that is, if I'm truly concerned about the
community,
I want to provide that community with the best police
force that we can possibly put into the community.
If I say community first, and I'm not focused on coming up and
developing the best department that we can
provide for our citizens, then I'm working backwards.
Our police officers,
they have to be the first priority
because they're going into everybody's community to work for you.
These are our communities, and I want to make sure that you have the best of the
best when we send them in.
We're going to keep broadening the resources available to our officers
so that they can best serve the people of Chicago.
I look forward to the continued work together, making Chicago
safer for all, and the residents,
and all of our families,
because we live in this city, too.
We have family members that we know we need protected.
But we also know
that as important as our family members are to us,
your family members are equally important. That is the job we do.
That is the message coming from the top, and we will continue
to drive in that direction. Thank you.
Thank you, Superintendent.
We will begin today. Normally, we have the chairs of the
committee start in their respective areas. They're not in this morning.
I've got Vice Chair Lamont Robinson.
I'm going to ask, however, that Alderman Osebe be allowed to go first.
He has a family matter to attend to, after which we'll go to Alderman
Robinson. Alderman Osebe.
Thank you, Chair.
Good morning, sir.
Good morning, Alderman.
I'd like to start out by expressing the condolences
for the family of Enrique Martinez,
on behalf of my community and myself,
to you and the entire department.
Thank you.
Many of us in this room will be in attendance
Sunday at the wake, Monday at the funeral.
I'd like to start out,
could we talk a little bit about the Crime Gun Intelligence Centers and the work
that's gone on there?
Absolutely. What I will do is I'll turn this over
to the Chief of Detectives, Ur City, and she can talk a lot more clearly about it.
Question. Good morning, Alderman.
So, real pleased to talk about the Crime Gun Intelligence Center.
We touched on it a little bit last year.
It officially launched earlier this year in March.
It's a really important partnership that we have with the ATF and about a
dozen other federal and local agencies.
Right now, what they've been able to do is co-locate under one roof
federal agents, officers, detectives, analysts, and
prosecutors, who every morning are able to review
gun
intelligence that's coming back from recent incidents that have just happened
within the past day or two.
So when we're talking about
some of the successes that are coming from that, through the end of September,
CGIC has opened more than 140 investigations.
So again, that's since March. They've opened 140 investigations.
They've secured 12 indictments.
And this is a result of having reviewed collaboratively, like I had mentioned.
We have all these individuals sitting around the table every morning, going through
all of the leads that are getting returned from NIBIN.
That's our National Integrated Ballistic Information Network.
And why that's relevant is, and we heard a little bit earlier in the remarks about
our forensics,
and our goals there, and I really want to highlight some of the incredible work
that we see happening out of our firearms lab.
What they've been able to do so far this year, just from crime scenes,
they've been able to enter 8,100 acquisitions.
What that means is that when we're collecting fired cartridge casings,
these men and women are getting this almost immediately into this
NIBIN system.
And as a result, it's going ahead and it's
returning
leads that our detectives are able to follow up on.
So we've seen the number of leads just steadily increase
since the lab's been able to work
under the CGIC initiative, that they're turning back and being able to
follow up on these investigations.
In essence, what the CGIC is doing is making sure that we're identifying the most
prolific
gun offenders and having a plan to apprehend them and prosecute them.
So that's where our CGIC is today.
Thank you.
I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about helicopters.
It's something that
I know you've worked hard on. And could you just give us an update as to where
we're at with
the acquisition of more air support
to support?
So
let me be clear about a couple of things as to
how we got the funding
for our helicopters.
And I'll let
Ryan Fitzsimons talk a little bit about that.
But here's the importance of the helicopters.
Air support.
We know that
we have a serious problem in the city with vehicles being stolen.
We also know that we had a serious problem with vehicular hijackings.
We have decreased vehicular hijackings by a very large percent
In our robberies. So our robbery strategy team, because when we talk
about robberies, number one, from the human aspect of it, imagine
four individuals, masked, jumping out of a car, sticking a gun in your face,
and forcing you to an ATM.
Elderly people,
young people,
young kids being robbed.
People on their way to work. The trauma that that causes.
So we also know that when they're attempting to make good their escape,
they're escaping by the use of a vehicle, usually a
stolen vehicle.
So now our officers could pursue on the ground, but if they pursue on the ground
and this person
crashes into someone, or someone is hurt or injured as a
result of this vehicle pursuit, now the city
will have a lawsuit that they're going to have to pay out.
To reduce this, and reduce this risk,
we have air support. So what our officers are doing now,
when someone flees in a vehicle, they call for the helicopter.
The helicopter now follows that vehicle, and those officers could get to a
location where that vehicle stops and take someone into
custody. We have been very successful with that.
So what it has reduced is the risk to people in our city.
It's also reducing the risk
of lawsuits.
This is overall going to save us money.
This is a one-time fee to pay for a helicopter to
save us millions upon millions of dollars in lawsuits.
It's also a much better strategy
than pursuing
a vehicle in a vehicle.
That helicopter gets to locations quicker, and they can see
from an aerial view what's happening and provide that information to
officers who are attempting to get to the scene.
That being said, right now, we've procured one
helicopter. I'll let Ryan Fitzsimmons talk about that.
And by December, we should have the other two. And I'll let him talk about it.
Yes. Thank you very much, sir. So we acquired
one helicopter using the DNC funds.
So that's the new asset that we currently have.
We plan to add two more helicopters by the end of this year.
We're going to be using our urban area funds.
That's more federal grants. So in addition to that, we're going to be
adding two more helicopter pilots to our budget.
So if you look in the budget recommendation book on page 322,
we're adding two more pilots there to make sure that we're able to not only
staff these helicopters, but have additional shifts that we have air support.
And we're budgeting, in this budget, 500,000 to train these
individuals.
And the key here to understand is, listen, we either
pay
the small fee now to protect our city, or we're going to pay for
this a
thousandfold on the back end in lawsuits.
Thank you.
I want to switch to the consent decree, and you covered this a little bit in your
opening comments.
Consent decree is so much more than just a document.
And when I look at the consent decree, I think of mental wellness.
And I know there was talk over the last few weeks about possible cuts there,
and I'm confident that discussions will continue, and we can make sure
that that is fully funded. We will continue to provide support
to our officers and their families who need more support.
But it's also about, as you said, culture and training.
I wonder if we could just talk for a quick minute about
where we're at with the consent decree, and what do we think we need
to make sure that we can stay in compliance, but also continue to make
improvements to make this a better police department, sir?
That's a good question, and I will turn this over eventually to
Chief Angel Nevarez from Constitutional Policing.
Look, the consent decree is extremely important.
I personally met with Judge Paul Meyer, who's overseeing
our consent decree.
I meet on a regular basis
with the independent monitoring team.
I've met with the attorneys
from the attorney general's office.
And it's important to me that we move these efforts forward.
Now, there are certain things within the consent decree that I am
going to fight.
What we don't want to do in the consent decree is
render ourselves helpless as police officers, so that now when
we are responding to situations in neighborhoods where we're trying
to
defend people from the most heinous of crimes that are being committed against
them, that we set up roadblocks for ourselves.
At the same time, I'm very sensitive and
mindful of some of the issues that we've had in the past that
we need to correct as a police department.
That's not lost on me. I know where we've made these mistakes, and
we need to get better at that. And that's the most important part of the
consent decree. When we talk about wellness for our officers, again,
it's extremely important that our officers have people to
talk to. When we talk about trauma,
listen, I've been dealing with trauma since I was a kid growing up in Inglewood.
I've witnessed murders prior to taking this job,
and it stays with you forever. It never goes anywhere.
And then once on this job,
the trauma that you face as a police officer
is going to jobs and seeing abused children,
women who are victims of sexual assault in
the most violent manner
Children who have been murdered.
As I talk to you about this right now,
I still feel the death of a two-year-old that I
held back in 1993.
These are things that we need to make sure
that we focus on when it comes to our officers, because they're
dealing with PTSD on a regular basis.
When we talk about our officers who have died by suicide,
we have to take into consideration the things that they see on a daily
basis that may lead to that.
Absolutely.
And it is our responsibility to make sure
that we're checking on our officers, we're checking on their wellbeing, and we're
making sure that they're well prepared to go out there.
So with that, I'll just turn it over to Angel Navales to talk a little bit more
about the consent decree.
Chief Angel Navales, Office of Constitutional Policing.
Alderman, thank you very much for that question.
One of the things that I'd like to add before I get into the consent decree
progress is to talk a little bit about our approach when it comes to officer
wellness.
We took a two-pronged approach to address the issues that the
officers are dealing with. One is a clinical
approach and a non-clinical approach. We look at it two ways.
We look at how do we treat our officers, and how do we prevent our
officers to arriving at that point.
So when we look at our wellness section, we look at
putting into play an application that offers up
resources that officers have on their phone where if they
are starting to see symptoms, they can look on how to alleviate them.
The second is we've added quiet rooms inside the districts where they have a
small opportunity, and they have time to sit in those rooms and
decompress before they go out to their next job.
We also invested in the gym so the officers can get themselves
physically fit so they can go out there to do the job.
We know that exercise helps combat stress.
When we look at the EAP, the opening up of the additional
areas for officers to go to where it's close to home gives them that
opportunity. We've also given our officers wellness training to all
members of our department, not just our officers.
So they can recognize symptoms so they can get help, so when
these minor issues are crawling up, that we can get to them
before they become long-term problems.
When we talk about the consent decree,
as the monitor said on the public hearing, as the
OEG said at the public hearing, we have developed momentum.
And the reason we have developed that momentum is because we have not only the
infrastructure in place that took a while to get there, but we got that
infrastructure in place, the communication lines for both written
and oral, to ensure that we are achieving the goals of the consent decree.
Also developed was
we are no longer doing things in a silo.
So what we have are these multidisciplinary cross-functional teams
that have members from policy, members from training,
members from data, project managers assigned to each of
these to guide our efforts into achieving compliance.
So we know we are looking forward to the next
status report of the end of the IMR.
That should be coming out sometime this Tuesday.
But we have seen incredible gains, especially in secondary
compliance revolving around training.
And I'll just touch on that a little bit.
We have a requirement to have 40 hours of training for
our officers. That is key. That is more than we've ever received in the past,
at least in my career.
For those trainings, we have to achieve a level of 95%.
In order to achieve compliance, we aim to get 100%, is to get
95%, not only in each class, but as a department as a whole.
95% in all of those trainings. We have achieved those
goals, and we are doing it year over year based on the efforts and the
directions that we receive. One last thing that I can say that's led to
this momentum, and giving credit to our boss here, is that having
a superintendent that is as involved, that meets with us on a regular basis,
provides that guidance, continues to push us to think outside
the box, to be creative in what we put in place, has also
been extremely helpful. So what I can tell you is when the report comes out, look
at secondary compliance. We've really, really
pushed and made a lot of efforts and a lot of strides there, and
we're getting to that point where we'll be pursuing that operational compliance, so
you see that number grow. And we did see increases there. Thank you.
Thank you, Chief.
Chair, I apologize. I didn't expect this to go--
In closing, I just want to recognize my commander, Brian Cainan,
the job he does in the 22nd District.
I speak for my colleague, Alderman Mosley.
Fully engaged, doing everything he can to keep our community safe on the Southwest
Side. And you, sir.
Your leadership, and I know this isn't
who you are.
It needs to be recognized.
The job you've done, the leadership you've provided.
You're a man of honor, a man of integrity.
You've put this team together, leading this department. I see it every day.
Morale has improved in the police department.
Our police department continues to make improvements, and it starts at the
top. It starts with you. You hold people accountable.
And I just really appreciate the job you do, and I speak for a lot of people in
this room when I say that, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Next, we'll have Vice Chair Robinson, followed by Chairman
Dowell.
Chairman, thank you very much.
Superintendent, and to your command staff,
again, I would like to give my sincere
condolences
to you all and to the family of Officer Martinez
Thank you, sir.
I also would like to start out by
thanking some folks that are in the box and one that is not in the box.
There's one gentleman that I was talking to at 11 o'clock last night,
and talk to him regularly,
and that's Chief Hein.
Superintendent, you cannot do this work alone.
You have to have folks like Chief Heinz and Glenn
Brooks, as well as Chief Don Jerome.
And these are folks that
have helped me in areas that I have
had difficulty in the Fourth Ward, and I want to take a moment to commend
those folks.
We talk about how great our city is,
Superintendent, and as Alderman Quinn mentioned,
being a native from the South Side,
particularly Englewood,
a product of Chicago Public Schools,
you are the great example of Chicago.
And
my ask of you, and I'm sure you're doing some of this,
is to really look within your department for those other
great examples,
because our young folks need to be able to see
you
and understand your story.
You mentioned some of the PSD that you
had growing up in Englewood,
and our young folk have those same examples,
seeing those same things.
And you have been able to push through
and
give back to the city of Chicago. And so
my ask is that, again, you find those other examples
in your department because our young folk need to hear
from you and your officers,
particularly knowing the shortages that we have
in officers across the city of Chicago.
My first question to you is,
we've been hearing about budget cuts.
Certainly our city is at a crossroads
and we have to be able to
tighten our belt before we can go to the citizens of Chicago
and ask them to tighten up theirs.
And so can you please share with us
how those budget cuts
affect your department?
So I'll turn this over to Ryan at some point, but let me
just address a couple of things there, Alderman, and
thank you for that.
We,
as a department,
it's very important that we have the right people in the right places.
To rush to put someone in a position just to fill that position would be
foolish.
It would be silly and it would be irresponsible.
We want to make sure that when we put people in places, we're putting the right
people in those places and not just filling a seat.
We want to make sure that our leadership has been developed in those
positions because far too long in the past, these people were
placed unfairly into positions
without any mentorship, without any development, and that's
what we're working on right now to make sure that we have the highest
level of leadership here, and that's evident
when you look at that box and you see the leadership team over there.
Each and every one of them are greatly deserving of the positions
that they hold right now, and I could not sit
here and talk to you about success without them.
So thank you for that.
When we're talking about the positions
for the consent decree,
I just want to make one thing clear.
We,
as a department, understand how important it is to have the
right people, again, in the places to make sure that we're moving that consent
decree forward. We make sure that we honor what we
said we're going to honor
in coming into compliance with the consent decree and reforming
the department.
So we made sure we fought for every single
position
that we knew was going to be of the utmost importance
for moving the consent decree forward.
So what I will do is turn it over to Ryan Fitzsimmons to talk a little
bit about what we did to hold onto some positions.
Absolutely. Ryan Fitzsimmons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So one of the big pushes that we've done this year is trying to
hire as many civilians as possible.
So if you look at our hiring for 2023, we hired 100 civilians.
This year we're up to 160 as of today, and we have 19 start
dates between now and the end of the year.
So we are seeing a 79% increase in civilian
hiring.
Part of this is also making sure that we're managing overtime more
effectively. So if you compare what we expended in
2023 through 2024, we're looking
at almost approximate $80 million when you're comparing
those two figures. So in managing our time more effectively
and holding people accountable to how they're using time, and then also
trying to take roles and bring in civilians who are a much lower cost,
we're managing our resources more effectively in that way.
Thank you.
Superintendent, there is a RFI
that is out,
and that RFI is around
technology that helps your officers detect
gunshots
My question to you is,
in this body, what components
should we be looking for to help
improve public safety as well as assist your officers?
Well, if you're looking for components, and this is very
important,
one,
how quickly is it going to help our officers get to those locations, get to those
jobs?
Most important thing
about what our officers have been doing
is saving lives. It's something that no one talks about.
It gets drowned out
in other
issues or other concerns or complaints.
We take those concerns seriously, but at the same time,
there's nothing greater than saving a human life.
And ever since we put our LEMAR plan in place,
our officers have been going out there with those kits, and
they have saved lives. They've stopped people from bleeding out.
And just getting on the scene, even if it's not a
life-threatening injury, they still provide aid.
And that's the great work our police officers have done.
And getting to those locations as quickly as possible
is going to be helpful for those officers to save lives.
The other thing that we should be looking at is something that is going to help us
with evidence-based technology.
The collection of
shell casings.
We know about gunshot detection. We've already talked about that,
but there are other factors that goes into an
investigation.
Being able to apprehend offenders, if we can, as quickly as possible,
or at least using our technology to identify them.
So these are things that help us, especially with the CGIC Center that you heard
about earlier, that collecting that type of evidence is going
to help us
with our investigations and bringing people to justice.
We've done some of that work now. So those are the things that we're looking
for when we look at technology.
You know, at the time, I'm just following what you stated.
Are you looking for technology to be more of an
interventive measure or a preventive measure?
Because the conversation you laid out was more of a
interventive measure, and I think that
there's been a lot of conversation on the preventive
side. So help us understand where you kind of
land in that box.
Well, this is the issue with police work.
Unless you have a magic wand, there's no technology that will
prevent
crime. There is no technology. Unless you've got some robots out there that
are going to show up to jobs, there's no technology that's absolutely
going to prevent. That's what we do as police officers, and we
do that through the information that we gather from technology.
And that information that we're gathering
allows us to create plans around the possibility of things
like retaliation,
when we look at crime patterns that are happening in particular locations.
And once we're able to gather evidence and information around those things, we can
now plan around it, and we can place our officers
strategically around the city to make sure that we bring that down.
So there's prime example, the helicopter.
The helicopter isn't designed to prevent robberies.
What it's designed to do is help us catch those who are committing
those robberies. And when we stop
repeat offenders
from offending over and over and over again, you see a reduction in those
robberies. And we can plan around these things when we gather that
information. So there is no technology that's absolutely going to
prevent crime.
We need the technology to help us, as a police department,
gather enough information so that we can come up with strategic plans so that
we can put our officers in those locations to prevent that crime.
It's people, officers, who prevent crime.
Thank you for that response. Go ahead,
Vice Chair.
Thank you.
You're done? Okay, very well.
Speaking of helicopters, you can park your helicopter right on the west
side of the 28th Ward. We've got a facility that handles that.
Chairman Dowell, followed by Alderman Walker-Spatt.
Thank you very much,
Chairman,
Superintendent Snelling, and to your command staff, and to
the entire police department. I just want to thank you for your service to
the City of Chicago, and on behalf of the residents of the Third
Ward, we offer our condolences to the family of
Police Officer Martinez.
Thank you, ma'am.
I want to start out with when you came before us
last year, I asked you about
a workforce allocation study
for the
police department to sort of rightsize the staffing in the
districts, and you committed to looking into that.
What's the status of that work?
Yes, I did, ma'am. And for that, I'll go over to General Counsel
Scott Spears to talk about where we are with that workforce allocation study.
Turn the mic on.
Scott Spears, I'm General Counsel to the superintendent.
We have fully executed agreement with Matrix and with our funding
partners to cover that workforce analysis study, and we
have begun the preliminary work on getting that study taken
care of.
Can you tell me a little bit about who Matrix is?
I'm going to pass this over to Allison Clark-Henson.
Certainly. Matrix is a vendor who has over 30 years of
experience conducting such comprehensive workforce
analysis. They've done work in Los Angeles,
in San Francisco. There's many examples that certainly,
if you'd like to view some of their extensive work, it is available.
All right. They're located where, ma'am?
They are based out of California.
Out of California. And through the Chair, can you share
with us the
study requirements that you're asking, the questions that you're asking?
Certainly. We can provide. I know there is also online.
We have published it on the website, the scope of work and their proposal, but I'm
happy to also produce that through the Chair.
Okay, then you don't have to send it through the Chair.
I didn't know that there was a scope of work online. Thank you very much.
Superintendent Snelling, we had a presentation.
The PSA
was before us, the Office of Public Safety Administration, and
I learned that they have 910 officers
on medical
in CPD, which relates to about
7.5% of your police force or your
staffing. That number seems awfully high, and I'm
wondering what suggestions you might have
that we can
get some folks back to work.
Because I'm sure this impacts on our overtime amount.
You're right,
Alderwoman. It is very important that we
have a level of control over our medical section
that we don't have right now.
What would that control look like, Officer Superintendent?
Well, the control would look like what
it looked like in the past.
Medical integrity checks,
making sure that the system is not being abused.
Making sure that
individuals who are scheduled to show up in the medical section
actually show up.
We do need to do a deeper dive on
the doctor situation.
We have actually sat down with OPSA to talk
about how we're going to move forward.
We haven't, at this point,
come to any conclusions about how we're going to do this, but
Chicago Police Department needs to have
more responsibility
over the medical section and how the medical section is being
run.
I certainly would like to work with you on that.
When I heard the number was 910, and there's only one
doctor that oversees all 910
cases in the police department, and
how many of that was in the...
I think the number was over 200 in the fire department.
That was concerning to me.
So,
glad to hear you are aware of that.
Quick, Alderwoman.
You said about the medical section, what is it that the medical
section, in your opinion, is missing for the department so
that it can get more people back to their respective roles?
Well, the issue is this. We as the police department,
we
have a better idea of who our officers
are and what's going on.
Right now, it appears that some of our officers are
out for prolonged periods of time.
We as a police department need to have a better understanding of why that is.
We're not trying to get into people's medical records or anything of that
nature, but we want to make sure that the medical section is being used the right
way, and that it's not being abused.
And we need to have a level of control
over our medical section. We need to
have a better relationship and a better working relationship with
the doctors who are going to be overseeing this.
So it's important for us as a department
to have a level of control over
how we oversee the officers, home visits, things of that nature, just to make
sure that if our officers are sick, we want them to take the
time. But we don't want a system
that can be easily abused, and we want to make sure that we're
eliminating the possibility of any abuse.
Thank
you. Go ahead, Chair.
Thank you very much.
I noticed that the Office of Community Policing took a big
shave. Can you give me your thinking behind
those cuts
and the impact it will have on the city and our communities?
I'll turn that over to
Chief Novalis.
Chief Agent Novalis, Office of Constitutional Policing and
Reform. Sorry about that. I'll start, and then I will turn it over to Director
Brooks. When you look at the total number of individuals that have been shifted
from the Office of Community Policing, it's not necessary that there is a loss
there. What we are doing is, one, building the Office of Equity and
Inclusion, which will be responsible for ensuring that there's equity across the
board in our policies in our department.
But they'll also be tasked with community engagement when it comes to consent
decree policies. We are also doing that, looking at national best
practices, doing the same for victim services.
When we think of the Office of Community Policing, we also have to think of the 22
additional offices out in the field.
So it's not necessarily that we're losing the personnel, but we are shifting the
personnel to concentrate them on their scope.
For example, Crime Victim Services and the Office of Equity and
Inclusion. With that, I will turn over to Director Brooks.
Good morning,
Director Glenn Brooks. Can you hear me? Yep.
Good morning, Director Glenn Brooks, Office of Community Policing.
What you'll notice is that in the creation of the Office
of Victim Service, which was called for in the
CPAP recommendations, which we presented a couple of years ago, is really
increasing that victim services and giving it the infrastructure
necessary to properly execute it as we continue to go forward.
This is essential in not only the
wellness of the actual victims, but to help to reduce the
cycle of violence that we continue to see over and over, where at one point we'll
see a victim, then they become an offender, and vice versa.
So whatever we can do to break up that cycle and, more importantly, provide a
complete level of service to the victims, we are looking to do, and that's what
the creation office of-
Can you tell me how the CAPS office,
the focus, how that will look? How will that change?
So what that will look in is that currently, when we had
victim services, many of you know, we were focused on domestic violence,
where we just had an officer in a district that would
focus on reaching out to victims of
domestic violence. We have never had a
directed service to those who've been victim of aggravated
batteries or other crimes. And so
as we start to ramp up this space, we need to build out an
infrastructure that supports that. So we will have an office.
Every district will be serviced by a
victim service or a crime advocate who will
focus on those additional crimes outside of victim services.
That has to be built up so that we can do that.
Yeah. Alderman, if I can.
I believe what the concern is that you would lose those DVLOs, those Domestic
Violence Liaison Officers in the office. You will not.
Those individuals will still be there.
The victim services portion will be working hand in hand with them.
They will be able to offer a more focused approach in ensuring that victims
receive the resources that they need to get through whatever
issue they're dealing with. But those DVLOs will be there at the front line,
working with a counterpart within that Crime Victim's office.
All right. I'm going to go to some other questions.
I'm going to need a round two, I can tell you that, Chair.
The $30 million for CTA, what are we getting for those funds?
We'll go over to the Chief of Bureau of Counterterrorism, Duane DeVries.
Morning. Chief Duane DeVries from the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
So with CTA, I can get you the numbers through the Chair of the amount of
officers and the overtime initiatives, et cetera, that come out of that money.
But with that money, on that overtime, we have what's called special
employment. Those are officers that are hired back on their days off or
when they're on furlough to work
with mass transit. So they report to the mass transit unit,
but they work from wherever district they're in on their day off, and they'll
be supplemented by overtime. It used to be just
straight pay, now it's time and a half.
We negotiated that in the last year with Deputy Chief Joe Byrd when he was a
commander of mass transit, along with Kevin Ryan from the security
of the CTA, and they were able to get more funding for our police
officers.
Going forward, starting late in this November, they've got an
additional
60 more spots that they're going to fund because CTA had more funding for the
overtime initiative. So with that, we'll be able to add to the amount of officers
we had already, which almost gives us about 60% more
officers that can work that shift.
Okay.
So that's three shifts, days, afternoons, and then midnights.
Originally, we didn't have a midnight shift.
These extra officers will be able to help that midnight shift because, as you've
seen, we do see a lot of crime now on the CTA between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.
All right, and is that prioritized by certain
lines? Like-
Yes, that's correct. So the commander of mass transit,
Albert Oceguera, he has a data
section that does all the information on where the crime's occurring.
Obviously, we know a lot of it as we see on the news, the red line, the blue line,
downtown, where
all the trains meet and get off.
Those are in coordination with patrol. We speak with the commanders of patrol.
They have weekly meetings with the commander of mass transit.
They work together on these platforms.
We also have additional K9 now that we have assigned to these platforms.
So those missions change weekly based on where the crimes are occurring,
but they are strategically done based on data analysis.
Okay, thank you for that.
Yes, I'll take a round two.
I have more.
You have more? Okay. No, that's fine.
Is it fair to say that you all have swapped the title
crime victim or domestic victim advocate for just
straight victim advocate?
Yes, sir.
My apologies, sir. Chief Agent Ovalles, Office of Constitutional Policing.
Brian will take care of that.
Yep. Hi. Brian Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the
Superintendent.
So if you look within the budget recommendations, there is a
unit on page 322, SWAT.
You'll see it's subsection 4221. And one of the
additions that you have this year is we now have a title code,
9149, police officer assigned to SWAT, which means that these
officers get a higher pay rate than they previously did.
No,
I'm saying... No.
This was in relation to the-
... changes in community policing.
So you have a crime victim advocate-
Yeah
... and a domestic violence advocate, and then you added
some-- in the Office of Victim Services, just victim advocates.
So I'm just trying to understand if those, is that the same setup,
essentially?
Understood. So essentially what we did, yeah, it's basically the same.
What we've done is we've changed the title code because we were paying our crime
victim advocates around 56,000, our domestic violence around
58,000. We weren't getting the talent we need.
We're changing it to just a generic victim advocate, which is what you see on
334.
Okay. That's all. That's what I wanted to be clear about.
Alderman Walker Speck, follow Alderman Metz.
Your mic. You got to switch again, I think.
Not working.
Sorry, Chairman.
Superintendent, I also want to express my condolences for the
shooting of Officer Martinez and of course with his whole family.
And I think maybe I had a long list of
questions.
We all in this council
know that the officers who serve us every day, our commanders,
the sergeants, all the people that help us, we appreciate the work that they do
every day. And I know we all grieve at the loss of
Officer Martinez.
One of the issues that we worked on a couple years ago,
Alderman O'Shea and I, was to improve the issue of death
benefits for our officers, both on police and fire side.
And
we've had obstacles recently to improving that
based on, I think, some
changes that we have to make in the code.
But I wonder if you could address,
just briefly, how important it is for us to make sure that we do
support our officers and our families when an incident like this
happens.
First of all, thank you, Alderman,
for the
well wishes.
Look, it's extremely important because like anything
else, when there's a loss in our city,
it's unfortunate that these are the types of things that bring us together,
right?
That support
normally happens with families, and that's across the
board, whether it's the police or anything else.
We wait until something tragic happens prior to that.
And then we decide to come together, and then the day after, we're
back to the same old business. The issue here that
I think that's most important is that when we all go to the table
to talk about certain things, that we have an open mind.
That we don't show up to the table
with your mind made up
and pounding your fist with demands without hearing what the other side has to
say.
I think that's been our biggest failure so far in this city, and those are the
things that divide us, especially when it comes to the community and the
police. We need to do a better job of sitting down, talking to each
other, listening to each other, so that we have a better understanding of what it
is that we all need.
So
it is extremely important.
These are human beings. These police officers are human beings, and it's like any
other human being who is dealing with trauma,
any other human being who feels ignored, who feels marginalized for
whatever reason, be it
culture, religion, race, the uniform.
If we're not talking to each other, we're failing.
So I just think it's a good idea that we open dialogue
and start to talk about these things. So I appreciate that question.
Thank you. And
continuing on that dialogue, I want to thank your staff for the
work they did on hate crimes recently.
I know it's a difficult subject, whether it's Islamophobia,
antisemitism, whatever it might be.
What additional steps are you taking to improve our
response to that and also our proactiveness on fighting
hate crimes?
Well, obviously,
this is very serious.
And I know you worked with CCHR, and I want to add that you guys have
really collaborated well with them.
Absolutely.
And the team just does such a great job of showing up and making sure
the officers are there.
One of the things--
I'll go to Chief Hine just to talk about some of the things that we're doing on the
ground, and then I'll go to Chief Navalis to talk about some of the things that
we're doing in constitutional policing. So Chief Hine?
Good morning, Alderman, and thank you for that question.
Recently, if a hate crime has occurred and it's been identified as a hate
crime,
we'll work closely with our faith-based community.
We'll work closely with the alders who are affected by it, and of course, the
victim and their families.
Through the Bureau of Patrol,
additional resources, whether it be outside units or
district personnel specifically focused in that area where the crime
committed, we'll deploy those resources to that area to address
this incident and any incidents of retaliation, or it might occur, or future
occurrences. But we work closely, obviously with
the alders in the room that it's affected by,
and to that data-driven analysis if the hate crime occurred to
address that.
Chief Angela Novella's Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform.
I just wanted to touch a little bit about the supports that we provide
victims of hate crimes, and what we're doing.
In creating this office of victim services, that is going to be a key
focal point. And what we want to do is we want to provide
victims,
to create safe pathways. We want to be able to connect them with local
resources to help them
deal with the trauma that comes with being a victim of a hate crime.
We want to make sure that there is focused attention to those incidents, and
that's why we want to offer up that advocacy support.
And that will be coming out from our office,
the Crime Victims Office. I also would like to turn it over.
The detective division does some great work with hate crimes.
So I'd like to turn it over to Chief Antoinette Ersity.
Thank you. And thank you for your question.
One thing I do want to share in terms of what we're trying to do in our bureau is,
today we're actually holding another class with our detectives.
We started back in September, an eight-hour training that all of
our detectives are getting related to hate crimes, creating safer communities.
This is
an eight-hour day that is not only looking at federal and state
laws around hate crimes and how to secure the most
severe penalties for anyone who commits it.
But what I think you'll consistently hear across the board in the ways that we're
trying to get better is this training is bringing in
individuals who have been impacted by these crimes.
And that's always the perspective that we need to bring in when we're trying to
have solutions. And so, already
through the beginning of this week, we had almost 800 detectives trained, and we're
looking through the rest of this week to get the rest of that bureau.
So that's one thing that we're trying to do in order to be more
effective. And then, Chief DeVries, did you have something?
Chief DeVries from the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
Under the superintendent's leadership, obviously, hate crimes and what's going on
currently in the community, in not only just our country, but
across the world.
We do more of a holistic approach where all of our bureaus are working together.
Through the Counterterrorism Bureau, we have monthly meetings with the
Anti-Defamation League.
CPIC puts out information constantly on hate crimes that are occurring across the
country, what they're seeing in other cities, trying to get us ahead of it, putting
out information bulletins to our officers, what to look for.
And then obviously with our JTTF, we follow up on a lot of the hate crimes.
A lot of things that don't make public news, yet they handle behind the scenes, and
they do an amazing job. But it's a continued holistic approach where we all share
information on it and take it very seriously.
So as you can see, it's across all bureaus.
This is not just a one-stop shop. We take these things seriously.
Because when you hear the voices of people, especially those who have been
victimized,
we want to bring some justice. But at the same time, we don't want a
problem like this to continue. So, we fight it at
every level.
And as Chief DeVries mentioned, there are a lot of things that we
get out ahead of, and we stop it before it happens.
So,
the police department is working really hard to put an end to these things.
Well, thank you, all of you, for that comprehensive response.
It's
incredible to hear all the departments and sections working together on that.
Last question. Well, long list of questions, but
this one I'm sure will be asked later too.
But could you discuss some changes that you've made,
or improvements to the JTDC, the Juvenile
Treatment Center? Or what diversion
efforts you're making, not just in this budget, but in this
past year?
I will turn that question over to the Chief of Detectives, Antoinette Ersity.
Thank you, Superintendent. And thank you again for your question.
I know that we've regularly been able to speak in this
space here about some of the work that we've been doing.
And you'll hear when speaking with the Department of Family and Support Services
that we continue to build on the partnership that existed from the Juvenile
Intervention and Support Center to what we now call our Youth Intervention
Pathways program.
So when you're looking at what the key features of that program are, one, we are
trying to engage a network of service providers
that are in proximity to the young people that we're encountering, and that when it
is appropriate to divert away from court, when we
see the type of offenses, that it's an opportunity
to get somebody on a different path, that we can give them the greatest
accessibility in order to get onto that path.
We're currently now, when I'm describing that program,
that's after someone's been taken into custody.
But really the work of what we're doing now is how do we create those
opportunities at that first contact in the field?
We, along with the FSS, have been participating
in an initiative called the Chicagoland Youth Deflection Initiative.
This is an effort throughout the state to try to make sure that increased
opportunities for deflection, that contact that officers are having with
young people, are used to get somebody on a different path.
And so, that type of technical
assistance we're expecting is going to help us accelerate this work into
2025. One other thing I'll share about the program is
we are looking, and I think you'll see this in the budget, we're looking to get a
director over this program. Somebody who's going to continue to work
with
all of the data and the information that we're getting to make sure that we don't
have any gaps, that we're strengthening this program, and that we keep doing
better where we can. Thank you.
Thank you, Chief. Superintendent, thank you very much.
And appreciate all the responses and look forward to continuing to work
with you. And again, just express thanks to our
commanders and all their staffs in 14, 18, 19, and of
course the ... uh, reiterate that, uh, response that I
had the other morning for the, uh, shooting at, um, my house.
So thank you very much.
Thank you, Alder.
Thank you, Alder Waguespack. Uh,
Alderman Pitts, uh, followed by Chairman Tolefson. Are you ready?
You have one question?
Just one?
Okay, you go after Chairman
Pitts.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Superintendent.
How are you, Alderwoman?
Very good. Uh, Superintendent,
can you tell me how many officers have
retired since, uh, last year?
Ma'am, we can, uh, get that, uh, information-
Can you get it?
... to you through the chair.
Okay.
And in your recruitment, um, how many
new recruits then came on?
Um, I'll turn that over to, um, who has it?
Uh, Joy. Joy Brown.
Can you hear me? Oh. Director of HR, Joy Brown.
Um, good afternoon, Alderman. Uh, so to date we've hired
457 officers.
That's, uh, from last year to date, right?
That's right. That's this year.
And can you break those numbers down for me in terms of the ethnicity of
this group?
I sure can. Uh, so
to date we've hired, uh, 21%
of white, uh, recruits, 29% Black,
45% Hispanic,
4% Asian.
Okay.
Now, I have a question regarding ShotSpotters.
Can you tell me
how many calls have came in,
um, since the ShotSpotters were,
um,
discontinued
from residents?
Uh, that's kind of a hard thing to do right now.
What I would have to do is get with-
Can you get that?
... OAMC.
Okay.
And, uh, we can sit and talk with them, and we can get back to you on that,
Alderwoman.
Okay.
And if we could talk a little further about it, I can get a little more clarity on
the question just to make sure that we're giving you exactly what it is you're
looking for.
Okay.
Well, I just want to know, do the residents call in
when they hear shots out there? That's all I want to know.
Well, we do get calls.
And?
Right now, how it relates, uh, to the removal of
a shot detection technology, we would actually have to do a deeper dive
on that-
Okay
... just to see. Because it's been about six weeks, uh, since it was
removed, so we would actually have to do, um, an analysis
on that.
Okay.
Um,
how many officers, and I'm interested in
'11, '15, '25, how many
officers work on each shift?
Can we get that information as well?
We will get that information to you through the chair, ma'am.
Okay.
Um,
for our CAPS program, is there any
new strategy,
um,
with CAPS since we no longer have the ShotSpotter?
What's the plan and the procedures of working with the
community now on-
I can turn that over, uh, to Director Brooks.
Good afternoon. Director Glenn Brooks, Office of Community Policing.
So for immediately after, uh, ShotSpotter was
discontinued, we began to distribute the "We call police" signs,
which we not only deliver to all 22 districts, but to
all 50 automatic offices, where we can distribute those
at all of our engagements throughout the month.
In addition to that, we've been working with OAMC and the mayor's office
to distribute an additional several hundred thousand,
uh, flyers and messages to community members, and to really stress the
importance of calling the police whether it's shots
fired or when people observe any type of crime.
We will continue that through the end of this year, and we'll continue to look
at additional ways that we can keep pushing that message out and the
importance of calling the police and not waiting for someone else
to do it.
Okay.
Uh, Superintendent, is there, um, a structure...
I'm trying to say is, um,
a category
of when
there's a incident where the police respond.
What's
the category for top to bottom
in terms of prioritizing police to...
Do you have a list of those?
Alderman, I'm not sure exactly. I understand the
question.
Okay.
If you're asking the question how, uh, OAMC
dispatches calls-
Right
... I think they would be, uh, the best to give you that information on how they
prioritize their calls and, uh,
dispatch that information.
Does that answer-
So you're asking-
It's to the police department, correct?
So, I believe the question you're asking is that we have
priority calls. Priority one calls.
Right.
A priority call would be a domestic-related, uh, call,
um, where we're expected to get there as quickly as
we can. Um,
shots fired, someone's shot, those are priority calls.
Okay.
So if you'd like to, uh-
Well, let me just ask this
... have a little more information.
Let me ask this question.
Is someone selling drugs, is that a priority
call?
It wouldn't be a priority over a domestic related
incident, right? Where we know someone's safety
or life could be in danger, right? Because the first thing that we're thinking
about is the sanctity of human life.
And as police officers, that's our number one priority, to make sure that we get to
those calls quickly.
So a call of selling drugs, is it a priority to
us? Absolutely, because we know it's a priority to you.
But that call would not take precedence over a call where we know someone
needs emergency assistance, where they could be being
abused or even hurt or killed.
Then my question would be, what are we looking at
in terms of...
Because they are priority calls,
the police can come, and they do come out when we call them when we have a problem.
The problem is they come right back.
That's the resident's problem. You can get rid of them and call
the police. They'll come out, and they'll work with the community.
We can get rid of them, and they come back.
So these are things,
Alderwoman, you bring up a really good point where the
police and the community and community members need to work together on.
One of the things that's important for us as police officers, again, that we have
to police constitutionally, right?
So we don't want to over-police because we
run into issues with that. That's when our lawsuits come in.
This is when our class actions lawsuits come in.
We want to make sure that when we're arriving on the scene, we
have some type of reasonable suspicion or probable cause for an arrest,
right? Or a reasonable articulable suspicion, excuse me,
for a stop. So,
depending on what it is that we find as police officers when we get
there,
if it's an arrest situation and we take them into custody, how long they're held is
not necessarily up to us.
And we do know that we do have these consistent problems.
This is why oftentimes, especially with open-air drug markets, things of that
nature, we try to do a little longer-term
investigation on those situations.
There's work being done behind the scenes.
It takes a little longer because we have to collect
the proper evidence to get that done.
But
for future purposes, we need to do a better job of
communicating with our residents to hear the complaints
that are coming from the residents.
Now, I say that to say this,
the residents of these communities have to have a louder voice.
Because if we're not hearing
the residents who are prisoners in their own homes, and there are a lot of
people who won't say that out loud.
There are people in these communities who are prisoners in their own
homes,
and
they're being held captive by members of that
same community. These aren't people from outside of that community
who are wreaking havoc on the community.
And
we need to have more voices coming from
people. Again, we don't want to put you in harm's way.
We want to make sure that you're not retaliated against because we
do know that that's a risk. But we need to find a much better way to work
together to solve these problems, to hold those accountable who need to be
held accountable.
I need to ask this question because I have an issue in my ward with
constituents.
What are the requirements
for
if the police officer were to come out
for an incident with the migrants?
Do
my constituents rather just file a report because of,
I think they was stealing or taking something out of the house.
What are the requirements for the police department when it
comes to a migrant and crime being committed?
Ma'am, when there's crime committed, it doesn't matter who it is.
It doesn't matter if-
They get locked up?
Yes. It doesn't matter if they're from the migrant population. It doesn't matter.
Listen, we
arrest people every single day for crimes that are being committed.
It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from.
If you're committing crimes, our job is to stop you from doing
that. So when something like that happens and we respond and
we have evidence of a crime, and we know that the person that has
been identified more likely than not committed that crime, we're going to take
that person into custody.
Well, thank you very much. I'll be talking with you because I got a call from one
of my constituents yesterday, and it was just along those
lines where they were stealing,
and she'd been in the neighborhood a long time.
Police car came by, but
very little was done. She sent me a video.
I haven't looked at it yet, but I do know what her issue is, and I know where
she's at. And we'll work with the
commander in the 15th to rectify the issue,
try to help the lady feel a little bit more safer in her home.
But in closing out, I want to thank you and
all of your department heads that are working on it.
I do have a few other questions around
recruitment and testing and all of that, but I'll take a
second round on that, Mr. Chairman.
So thank you very much for your work.
And for all my commanders and the team,
we're doing some great work with what we have, so thank you very much.
Thank you, Alderwoman. We'll make sure that there's a follow-up for you.
Thank you, Chairman.
To a point that she actually made, was actually a question that came
up with OEMC that kind of deferred it and kicked it to you
guys.
We have a culture of community policing
We have a limitation on the number of officers.
We have a call prioritization matrix
that,
in many districts, has people bouncing from call to
call.
In a community policing atmosphere, how can we effectively
community police
with officers if they have no unobligated time to
work and solve problems? How do
we do that?
How do we make that happen?
Well, this goes back to my strategic plan, is
to developing every officer
to be a community police officer.
Obviously, community policing has
specific
units within the bureau that respond to
particular things. However, we want our officers well-versed
enough that when they go to any situation, they're able to provide
some type of comfort to those who have been victimized,
a better understanding, better communication.
So this is some of the things that we've added to training to get that
done. And I'll turn it over a little bit to
Agent Novalis from Community Policing.
Chief Agent Novalis, Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, sir.
Thank you for that question. One, we are required to have community policing
training. We've also incorporated the concepts of community
policing in multiple different trainings because we know that some of the
training, it has that component. One of the things that I also wanted to
talk about is how we are carrying out the vision that the superintendent has
that every officer is a community policing officer, is that we're currently
working with CCA, the Civic Consulting Alliance, to assess
our current community policing program, look for areas of
opportunities, areas of deficiencies, so we can put together a
holistic approach to better address the needs of the community.
We are currently done with phase one, which was the internal interviews
throughout the department and community members, and we are currently moving into
phase two, looking for an early draft this end of December and
having a final draft in February. And that information
will help guide us forward on our path in community policing and achieving the
superintendent's goals.
That's great, but if the officers don't have
time...
And I guess where I'm going is that, are
we answering
the right calls? Are
there some things that you as a police
department shouldn't be answering,
versus diverting those to other places?
I know that we've had a history of just answering every call,
but is that the right
strategy in order to
allow officers to have time in their beats to do
proactive work, to do true community policing
work? Because you can't do community policing in the model if
you have no time to work on stuff because you're
consistently bouncing from call to call.
Well, here, I'll take that, Alderman, and
you're right.
When it comes to certain jobs, police officers are asked to do a
lot of things, and there are things that could be prioritized for
officers in calls. This is why we need
everybody, and this is one of the things that I've had
conversations with the mayor's office about,
and the
conversation around the
full application of government agencies.
We're 24 hours as a police department.
We're here all day, all night, and we respond to
just about everything.
Those calls that we need to prioritize, we
should. And we do need to take a deeper dive.
And as we work around our manpower
issues,
our workforce allocation, and that's more than likely going to help us get to what
you're talking about.
But we would also need other people who can step
up and handle those jobs. Because even though someone may have called the
police and it doesn't appear to be a priority
over something else, it's still a priority to them.
So we need to make sure that somebody is responding, even if
it's a situation where police services aren't needed.
So I believe once we get through this workforce allocation, we can
identify some things, and we can all sit down around the table and
talk about some of the calls that can be handled by other
agencies.
Thank you. Chairman Tuldia Farrell, followed by
Tabaras.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and
Superintendent. Let me first start with saying
thanks to the 16th District, 25th District, and 15th District commanders,
the officers in the districts as well, along with our community
organization. We're seeing this year alone
a 57% decrease
in homicides.
And that's a result of the great work of you men and women on the department,
along with our community organization.
And so I wanted to start by acknowledging that because
sometime it goes unacknowledged, the hard work that our officers do on the
street.
I'm very concerned with a couple things.
Specifically, in 2019,
I noticed, and I think a lot of my colleagues as well noticed, a rise in
police suicides.
First responder suicides, to be more in particular.
And I reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department because I noticed
that they had
gone two years without any suicides under the department, which is a much
larger police department, I understand.
And so I asked them what were they doing?
And they came to Chicago, and we spoke in conference about
some of the methods and some of the programs that they had started out in Los
Angeles. And one of the things I was very impressed by is that they had
a police psychologist in every single district.
And so it was my goal to try to get that here.
Unfortunately, COVID
stepped in, and we had to put things on the back burner.
But the previous administration did make a commitment to make
sure that we had at least a mental health clinician in every
single district.
And with that, I believe that it would've been very
good for our officers to have someone that they can go and speak with on a
daily basis
about their wellbeing and mental health wellbeing.
Because that's what they did. One of the psychologists told me, "I make sure I have
lunch with an officer every day just to get to know them.
We don't talk work, we don't talk..." They just sit down and meet someone every
day in that district.
And it's been working. Los Angeles have a very low police
suicide rate.
I'm looking in the budget, and I'm reading articles online to see that
although we were moving toward that goal, we had, I believe, 13
clinicians.
We're cutting the budget,
being fiscally responsible. We are not filling those nine
vacancies that we have on the Chicago Police Department.
I
find that concerning in light of we're opening two or three mental health
clinics. We see the need of mental health treatment in the
city of Chicago, but we're reducing and taking those items or taking
those vacancies out of the budget with our police department.
Can you tell me why we're doing that, why we're reducing?
Or, if we are in fact doing it, why are we reducing
or taking those vacancies out of the budget?
Because I believe it's very important to make sure that our officers' wellbeing
stay a priority under your leadership.
Well, you are 100% right,
Alderman. When I was a commander of Englewood during civil
unrest and
COVID, our officers were suffering greatly,
especially at the narrative around policing at that
time. And when there was a clinician available, I threw
my sergeant out of his office and
gave the officers the opportunity to go in and have a conversation, and it
was very helpful for these officers.
The request and in the budget was a clinician
for each district.
The cuts initially took away, I believe it was nine.
But I've since had a conversation,
a deeper conversation,
with the mayor's office, and that's taken off the table now.
Okay.
So
we're back to where we need to be because, again,
wellness is of the utmost
importance
to all of us here, and it's one of the things that helped us through everything
that we've done this year.
When we look at the success of the Democratic National Convention,
the wellness component of that was the most important thing.
When you have officers out there with people yelling the most ridiculous
things, the nastiest things that they could possibly hear, those
officers need a little downtime.
We need to make sure that they were hydrated, that
they were eating. And we had so many people who were
willing to help those officers out, to provide
food, to provide water. And then our leadership to be out
there
standing side by side with them, showing them that we care about them,
and that if there's going to be a level of accountability applied to those
officers, that level of accountability is also applied to myself.
It's also applied to every leader on this job who is
out there to oversee the work that these officers are doing.
And that's why those officers worked so well, because we treated them like
human beings. That's why it was so successful.
So you're 100% right.
Those are positions that were extremely important to us.
And now,
at this point,
there is a promise that those are taken off the table.
I certainly appreciate that, Superintendent, and I think we should
really focus in 2025 on making sure we fill those vacancies.
Now I understand the,
and this may be an issue as far as the salary's concerned,
but we have some folks out there that are willing to serve in that capacity
given the rate of pay that they'll receive.
And so I think we need to make a strong effort to make sure
those nine vacancies are filled in 2025.
My last question is,
and I apologize if this question has already been asked.
Yeah.
I spoke with-
You said you had one question, man.
I know. I changed my mind.
16 parts. Go ahead, man.
I spoke with Decase commissioner earlier regarding
the use of police for festivals. And again, I apologize if this has been
asked.
Oh, are you good? Go ahead. I'm sorry. I didn't hear the question.
I spoke to the commissioner of Decase during the budget hearings, and
with regard to
the number of festivals that we have and the use of our police officers that come
from our districts in most cases,
to provide security.
I asked her, are we being reimbursed for those officers?
And she said
that the superintendent submits an invoice.
There's witnesses here. She said the superintendent submits an invoice
to the festival
vendors, for example, Lollapalooza,
and any other of the hundreds of festivals that we have, and they are
reimbursed
for the use of our police department, police officers.
So my question is, and I hope I'm not catching you off guard because
you return all my calls, which I certainly appreciate,
are we being reimbursed?
And if so, how much are we getting back
from Lollapalooza and all these other
festivals that are making
hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars?
I'd like to know how many invoices you've submitted.
So let me-
Oh, you can be honest now.
Hold on.
I'll let Ryan address the invoice
situation. But let me just explain something about
the events that occur across the city.
Some of them are ticketed events.
And if they're not providing their own security,
and if we're not being reimbursed,
our officers are being used in an overtime capacity to cover
those events.
That's correct.
Now, what happens when our officers are being used to cover those
events, those events where we're not being reimbursed,
those officers are being pulled out of districts.
We usually use tactical teams to do that
because of contractual issues,
and fourth watch personnel.
Then, what we don't account for, we can account for the
overtime where our officers
are at an event because there's an event number for that particular event.
But when those officers are removed from the districts, we have district
commanders to fill those positions in the districts do what we call buybacks,
and they open up overtime initiatives to cover the
cars, the vehicles, and the shortage in the district while those officers are at
these events. So, that comes out of our overtime
budget.
And there are a lot of times where
CPD is criticized for-
Expenses
... overtime expenses when
CPD had
no say so in what events are being approved, and that
information does not get to us right away.
We need to do a much better job
of holding event planners accountable for security
and reimbursement when our officers have to direct
traffic.
Lots of times, depending on the event, our officers are there days in advance
of the event because there's fencing that has to be put up.
We'll talk a little more about that, but I'll let Ryan Fitzsimons talk a little bit
about the numbers.
Hi, good afternoon, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So if we look at our events for 2023, we
expended approximately 19.2 million for all the events.
This year, at this point in time, we're at about 22.6 million, and the year's
not done, so we're trending up.
How much have we been reimbursed for?
And Chairman-
So-
... I understand my time is up.
Yep. So we've been reimbursed for two events, Lollapalooza and Chase Corporate
Challenge. That should come out to a little bit below 2 million if we
were reimbursed for all of the overtime.
If you look at our ticketed events, so your Lollapalooza, Marathon, NASCAR,
that comes to about 7.2 million. And then if you look at the overtime that we
are providing to the United Center, Wrigley Field, Guaranteed Rate,
that's about 2.5 million. So those two things together are about
10 million or so, which if you look at the 162 cuts that we
took to the consent decree, that's also around 10, 11 million.
So, what happens with this, it's not just CPD, it's CFD, it's
Streets and San, it's 2 FM, all these city departments that are providing
services. It's a
decentralized system. So what may make more sense is we
can provide all of our historical data about what our costs are,
and we can provide that to DCASE, we can provide that to the Department of Finance.
We can give a unified city service quote at the front end,
so then the event organizers can build that into their cost structure.
And then once the event happens, we make sure we expend the funds, and then
Department of Finance could collect the funds.
Can you do that? I
understand you say you can do it, but can you do it and make sure the city,
or our budget director, and make sure that our DCASE commissioner
get those upfront costs?
I have the-
And I think you should have an across the board percentage of what we
should be reimbursed. And I'll close out with this because I know my time is up.
Can you get me a list of all of those festivals that we
provide services for?
Through the chair.
Thanks a lot. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I know-
That's my one question.
I know you go to church, you're a deacon, but you had three closers in-
... in one conversation, and you promised us what? It's all good, though.
We're going to get this up.
I learned from Deacon Irby.
All right. Chairman Dowell.
Just to add, not just festivals, but if we can
make it broaden into events, so parades,
anything else that you have that are-
I guess to Chairman Dowell's point, could you provide us your
events in a
way for public consumption? If you've got event numbers that
are confidential or other things that are going on,
you can do how you need to do with those.
But so we can get an understanding of, because it does show up
in overtime and
what's driving overtime, because we're always on you guys about overtime.
However, if it's being driven by external forces, I think that's
something that we all need to understand and we all need to
take a deep dive into that, and what the cost of these festivals are doing in
bringing to us, and what the cost benefit looks like in that respect to that.
Do you have your hand up, Alderman Lopez?
Thank you, Chairman. I was just going to
add that,
would that be considered special events overtime, to your point, for all the things
that are billable back?
It can be special events, but again, like the point that he said he has to
do buybacks in the district because they've sent somebody out.
That really is a cost of that event that occurred, not
of the district's doing, it's of the event's doing.
So I think it's just better trying to understand the cost allocation on that point.
And to your question, I believe Chief DeVries can give you a little more.
Chief DeVries from the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
Being the incident commander of several of these events,
one of the biggest issues is when the city,
they go into a contract with these different companies and these different
organizations, the festivals, the police department's not at the table.
So these festivals say what they need and what they think they need for their
security, but they don't include the police department.
So to the superintendent's point, a festival like Lollapalooza, they're here two
weeks in advance. They're here a week after.
The police department, like the first district, has to do traffic control while
they're putting up all the fencing, while they're closing all the streets.
We lose the revenue of all those parking meters that are on those streets as well
in advance because they're taking all that line for the fencing.
And then when the fencing's coming down, it's the same thing on the police
department side. For an example, for NASCAR.
NASCAR only reimburses for their footprint.
So anything that's inside the NASCAR footprint, they reimburse the police
department for overtime. Everything on the outside of that footprint, which takes
our traffic control on Lakeshore Drive to assist with closing Lakeshore Drive, to
assist with keeping cars from crashing into the fence until Lakeshore Drive is
shut, to securing the venue overnight when they're not in there,
that's all coming out of our budget of overtime.
We have to supply all those resources, and that's never considered when these
events are taken into account and when the contracts are signed with these
companies.
Okay. That's a fair statement there.
We're going to go to Alderman Tabaras, followed by Alderman Quinn.
Thank you, Superintendent, for being here today.
How are you, ma'am?
And to your leadership team as well.
I have some questions regarding issues with information and
policies regarding instances of police-involved
shootings.
Recently,
COPA's Chief Administrator, Andrea Kirsten, sat before this
committee and testified about the incident when Dexter Reid shot a
police officer
and officers returned fire, resulting in Reid's death.
Ms. Kirsten testified her media statements were
based not on officer statements,
but on what was related to her agency on scene by a deputy
chief.
She mentioned that this deputy chief spoke to four
out of the five officers and then related that
information to her staff on scene, presumably
because the fifth officer was being treated for having just been
shot.
Her words were, quote,
"Information given to us by officers
via the deputy chief." These are her quotes.
She was quoted in that. She also stated, quote,
that "This is routinely how the Chicago Police Department
cooperates with our agency." That's her. This is what she said.
Crime scenes can be chaotic,
especially when a police officer has been shot.
The Incident Response Team,
IRT,
are highly qualified, trained, and
certified investigators.
Unlike the staff at COPA.
I repeat, unlike the staff at COPA, who lack this
training and certification. COPA lacks this training and
certification.
Having COPA's info
get out so quickly raises issues
with overall public perception and makes
IRT's job more difficult.
My question here to you is, can you
comment about Ms. Kirsten's assertion
that this is routine,
and what steps the Chicago Police Department took
in this specific instance and in general to
ensure an accurate recounting of the events are made public?
So,
one of the things that I can tell you is
that's not true.
That's not common practice.
The street deputy, because I've served as a street deputy on several
occasions. One,
in the murder of Ella French,
and a catastrophic injury to Officer Yanez.
As the street deputy, your job is to make sure that everyone is following
protocol.
Public safety. To make sure that the
public safety statement is
given to the officers. Your job is to make sure that any
information, that the possibility that an offender is
still on the loose or if anyone is injured and needs medical
attention. That's your responsibility.
So your responsibility is to make sure that protocol is being followed properly.
The responsibility of the street deputy is not to investigate
what occurred.
The officers at that point
have rights, and there's going to be a full investigation.
The reason that the street deputy is not to
interview and ask questions about the
investigation is because we never, as the Chicago Police
Department, want to give off the appearance that we're guiding the officers.
So any information, because now the tactical
response report has to be done, and in that tactical response report that has to
be completed, there is no narrative And the
reason that there's no narrative is because the street deputy who is going to
approve that tactical response report
doesn't ask questions about the investigation.
Now, at some point, these officers are questioned by
COPA.
We should never put statements out about
what the officers said based on
third-party information.
When we're looking at people who are out there on a regular
basis making split-second decisions,
and having the time to come down from that
to be able to give a better account of what
occurred,
that should never happen immediately on the scene like that,
because there has to be a full and proper
investigation.
So when we put out information that's third-party based
or hearsay at this point,
it's
irresponsible
because it affects the investigation and the outcome of the
investigation. So what we shouldn't be doing is
putting information out there, in part based on third-party
information that we have not proven at this point,
to frame
people's thoughts about what occurred. We want to know the facts.
We want to know everything that occurred, and that's whether the
officers acted
appropriately, or they acted within policy,
or they did not. We want nothing but the facts to come out in those
situations.
So with that, my second question is did the
incident response team
relay or compile any witness accounts
or compiled video evidence to COPA
or to the public?
And if so, what discussions
were had regarding its release or lack
thereof?
Who is involved in that decision?
So
here's what I'll tell you on my account.
I believe in transparency, and I believe in transparency upfront.
Oftentimes, we release videos without
context,
and that context kind of sets up the information
so
the layman can look at it and see the chain of
events that occur.
We want to be careful not to go too far in those situations because
of legal ramifications. We want to be very careful in those
situations.
My thoughts around this is to get the information out to the
public within 48 to 72 hours. What I can tell you is
that
our IRT team,
and I cannot tell you what a great
job
they do at these police-involved shootings,
when they arrive on the scene, how professional they are, their
professional interaction with COPA,
and the transparency is there.
They're not hiding anything, and we see to that.
There's body-worn camera footage that they collect.
Nothing is manufactured. Nothing is doctored.
They do everything the way that it's supposed to be done because
that's what the public expects. And in a police-involved shooting,
if it's within policy,
the proof will come out. If it's not within policy, the
proof will come out. We don't need to frame people's thoughts around it.
So it's extremely important that we're very careful, and we keep it aligned.
So what I can tell you is that our IRT team
put a video together within a 48-hour period
just to show the chain of events.
And there was a lot of information around the shooting prior
to the video being released.
What I'd like to do moving forward
is, as a police department, be as transparent as possible to get information
out to calm those fires.
In this particular instance, we did put a video
together. It was the first time
that we had done something like this,
but the video did not have any determinations about the shooting in it.
It was simply
a collage of the body cam
footage
to provide to the public. So
what I will tell you is the leadership in this department right now, we're about
transparency.
We're about making sure that we educate the public on what we're doing.
Because it was the first time that we had done this, I'm sure there was some
concern around it, and we ultimately
agreed that COPA would then put out
the version of the video.
So we did not do it, and it wasn't because we were
unwilling to do it.
Mm-hmm.
I just believe moving forward, this is something that, as a police department, if
we're going to show transparency, that we have to do, but
without framing
the outcome
of this shooting. It's irresponsible to do so,
and it's dangerous, to be quite honest with you.
Well, Mr. Chairman, I know I have 10 seconds left, but if I may close.
There's a reason that law enforcement often says
that they cannot comment on ongoing
investigations. There's a reason for that.
It's not about who reports the information
first. It should be about who is reporting it
right.
Because of the early framing of the Dexter Reid shooting,
I personally witnessed many media reports that
failed to even mention that a police officer was shot.
I hope that as a body, we continue to question
whether involvement of COPA in these instances have
a net positive on public safety.
Because it appears their lack of
standards result in a narrative that makes a
justified use of force appear suspect, and creates
an environment, despite the transparency of
CPD,
where officers will be hurt or killed because they may
hesitate to use force to save their own lives.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I will take a round two.
All right-
Thank you
... Alderman. I think you raise
a very good point in that I don't know if we have to throw the baby out
with the bathwater, but I do believe that
everybody wants, I think, transparency.
We also want to account for officer safety.
And if a mistake was made by the head
of the agency in what she did, that doesn't necessarily need to
castigate the agency. We might need to make some adjustment in the
personnel,
but I don't know if we need to castigate the agency.
I think that is a product that has come through a lot of conversation
just in the council, and as well with the community.
So I don't know if we necessarily want to, as I say,
throw the baby out with the bathwater. But your point is well taken.
I did have similar concerns as we had that conversation with
COPA when they were here. So it
does warrant further conversation. So Alderman Quinn.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
After Alderman Quinn, Alderman Mitch said we are ready for lunch.
So after Alderman Quinn, we will break for lunch.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Superintendent, thanks for being here today.
Thank you, Alder.
This body certainly appreciate your leadership.
I also extend my condolences for the passing of Officer
Martinez. He was a 13th Ward resident.
It's a great Chicago family there, and I know they're hurting, and we're going to
do everything we can to put our arms around them.
My condolences, sir.
Thank you.
As you know, I represent scores of police officers in the ward,
and they trust you, they respect you, they think very highly of your leadership.
I also believe you've earned the trust of the City of Chicago based on
the DNC and your work leading from the front.
While our city is facing a tough budget process,
there are issues facing our city that cannot be ignored.
And I
haven't kept a secret about our fight for a new police district on the Southwest
Side. And
it's important. And earlier, in some of your remarks, you talked about
communities raising their voices louder.
My community's screaming right now for a new police district.
And I know at the end of the day, this decision is not yours, but we'd
certainly love
for you to be an advocate for that.
And we had talked
this past week about doing a walkthrough of the facility along
63rd Street.
Do you think that's possible?
So here's what I'll tell you, Alderman, because look, I'm an advocate
of
recruitment, adding more police officers-
Yep
... and whatever we can do to make communities safer and to make them feel safer.
However, I believe that what we need to do in this particular situation,
number one, is do a true assessment of the facility.
Yep.
We have a workforce allocation that's going to be in place.
Yep.
And based on the outcome of that, that is going to be very helpful to us,
and to you,
to determine, based on a lot of things, the size of a
district, the number of people, the calls for service.
That's going to help us determine those things also.
Well, I'm delighted to hear that because this campaign for a new
police district has been rooted in data.
We're the biggest police district by 50,000 residents.
We have the worst officer per capita ratio in the entire city at
nine, at best, per 10,000. We're number one for calls for service.
So I'm delighted to hear that.
Earlier
in this budget process conversation, Budget Director Guzman made
a very good point
that is applicable for this particular situation.
There is a cost for doing nothing,
and that statement is very much applicable
to this campaign for a new police district.
Because the byproduct of this
is that people are just going to move out of the city.
That's what's going to happen. And that's a tax base that doesn't
ask for a whole heck of a lot.
They pay all the time. They don't ask for a whole heck of a lot.
And during this process, they're being potentially asked to pay more.
What are they getting in return is the question at hand.
So I'm delighted to hear that you have an open mind about this situation.
I'm delighted to hear
that we could take a walkthrough and do an assessment.
That's a good start. We can't shut the door on the
residents of the Southwest Side. The last time a police district
boundary was changed was 1968. Hell, I wasn't even
alive then.
So if we're being real here and talking about
communities raising their voice, they're screaming.
I'd like to move on, and thank you for that. I'd like to move on.
In the mayor's remarks, he talked about detectives and
having 200 detectives
on par or completed by the end of the year.
And last year, I raised this concern about bleeding the rank and
file for detectives.
I just want to get a quick assessment because I've got a
few other questions I'd like to ask. If you could just answer that quickly.
So just a quick assessment of that.
When the mayor mentioned that
My concern, again, was to make sure that we weren't bleeding the
rank and file. So incrementally,
we made those promotions to make sure that we had police officers on the
street during the Democratic National Convention, and we just promoted the last
80
after the Democratic National Convention.
Then we also waited for
the recruit classes to come out-
Got it
... to start making those, to make sure that we weren't losing a huge
number of bodies within the district.
Right.
Also, in terms of this budget, how many cuts
in this budget for sworn officers?
Ryan, you got that number.
Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent, 94 sworn officers
were cut.
94 sworn officers. How many last year?
That one, just ballpark, was around 400, and that was where we were doing the
one-to-one swap of sworn to civilian.
Okay.
Marty, hold up.
The ones that you cut this year, where did they come from?
Yeah. So
I don't have the exact breakdown, but the-
Yeah, you can get that through the chair where you took them from. Go ahead.
I'll send it.
I just have
one
final
comment,
and it's not a reflection of you at all, Superintendent.
Yesterday, after the meeting, we attempted to add
ShotSpotter back
to the narrative
of this budget-making process.
It's absolutely embarrassing that we've replaced gunshot
technology with window signs saying that we call
the police. That's what we've done.
That's embarrassing for this first-rate city.
So I'll leave it with that, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, Alderman. Appreciate it. Thank you, Alderman Quinn.
Alderman Mitch, are we ready?
You ready?
Alderman Mitch?
Yes.
We ready?
Yes, we ready.
Okay. All right. We will break. We will return back at
1:30.
Superintendent and team, you all want to join us for lunch, and we will return at
1:30.
Also, for the record, everybody's on the list. You're all on the list.
I know everybody didn't come just to hang out today. Everybody's on the list.
We are back up and rolling. We're going to open the afternoon
session with Alderman Lapata. Alderman Lapata,
you may proceed.
Hey, thank you so much. Superintendent Snelling, thank you so much for being here
with us today. I
appreciate your leadership.
In the year or so that you've been doing this job, I've had more
communication with you
than the four years, five years prior with your predecessors.
So I appreciate deeply your direct accessibility
to alders. I will also say one of the best pieces of advice I got
when I started this job was doing ride-alongs with my police
commanders. And not cozy little 3:00 PM
ride-alongs. They picked me up at 11:00 PM, we're out
till 3:00 AM, because there's no point seeing nothing.
The only point is seeing what is actually happening in your
ward. So I thank you for keeping us accountable on
that front.
Thank you, Alder.
I
have three budget questions, and then I have a fourth
question that is more related to policy.
So looking at the Office of Community Policing,
I know that we have a
substantial decrease in headcount there.
A lot of it is accounted for
in--
Sorry, the Office of Constitutional Policing.
A lot of it accounted for in the reorganization with the newer department
where positions have been moved to.
The one space there that does genuinely concern me
is with the reduction in
performance analysts positions.
So last year, that office had 11 senior performance
analysts. That's down to two in this budget.
Had seven performance analyst titles.
That's down to zero.
Anytime you're going from 18 of something to two of something
feels concerning, and I'm wondering if maybe this is for
a member of your team in the box to explain
how those positions operate and how
we make do with that much of a decrease in headcount.
Okay. First of all, officer, I'm sorry, Alderman, thank
you for that question. And
obviously everybody's concerned about a lot of these things, and those
concerns are valid. What I'm going to do is turn it over to
Ryan Fitzsimons, and he's going to explain
what we did there.
Hi, Deputy Director Ryan Fitzsimons.
So those roles that you're referring to on page 332
were the roles that were designed to be part of our performance
management section that we were going to try and create.
I'm actually going to turn this over to Managing Deputy Director Allison
Clark-Henson, who can give you a little bit more information about that
work.
Good afternoon. Managing Deputy Director Alison Clark Henson, Office of
Constitutional Policing and Reform.
Yes, the Performance Management Division was a division that
primarily functions to develop sound statistical methodologies for
analytical determinations for the department's reform efforts.
The purpose was to be a self-assessing accountability measure
that would provide timely identification of personnel issues and trends that are
inconsistent with expectations established in policy and that are reinforced in
training. So those positions were intended to serve that
function that would allow for addressing any kind of potential issues
promptly and provide the ability to measure the effectiveness of any corrective
action taken. So, those were the roles of that
team and those positions that we established.
So am
I just looking on the wrong page where they just port it to a different location?
Yeah. So the ones on 332 within the Office of
Constitutional Policing and Reform, those performance analyst titles, that's on
the page there. Those aren't within community policing.
Those are a little bit separate. We've also been in dialogue to
try and return these positions back for the
2025 budget.
No, I guess,
so are the positions that I'm referring to, were
they cut, or were they reorganized to a different place in the budget?
Those were cut,
but we've since had dialogue with the administration to get those positions
returned to the budget.
Okay.
Yes.
Super. Appreciate that update.
Question number two,
under community policing,
and again, there was a lot of reorganization
there. I understand why we made some of the reorg decisions that we did,
and again, this might be a part where changes have happened that I don't know
about,
but it looks like in 2024, we had
39 CAPS community organizers, and in our
2025 budget, that number goes down to 23.
Is that an accurate understanding of that position?
Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendents.
Yes, that is a correct
analysis. I will point out that those 16 that were added to go from
23 to 39, that was new to the 2024
budget. So it's a reversion to the 2022 budgeting
figures.
Well, did we never hire those positions, or what happened?
We posted, and then we did not get the
candidate interest that we would like. We have had a few people start.
We've had some people leave. But we haven't seen a huge
increase.
Do you mind if I ask to what we attribute the lack of success
in finding people for those positions?
I think a lot of it, and you've probably heard this from all of the different
departments, it takes an incredibly long time to get a job with the
City of Chicago.
I think for these roles, they start at around
$60,000, and to wait six months for that role is-
Mm
... maybe not realistic for the reality that some individuals are experiencing.
I hear that. It's frustrating, but I do hear it and understand it.
We have great CAPS organizers in my area, and I feel like they're-- Our
CAPS sergeants are also great, but the community organizers are just the
frontline in getting people actively engaged in the police work and public
safety for our community. So I appreciate the work that they're doing
nevertheless.
I did have two questions related to traffic
stops.
Because they do
represent,
particularly in the 14th district, a great amount of police work goes into our
traffic stops.
The impact on public safety can feel unclear at times, and
I say that from a perspective of, over the last few years, only about
0.5% of traffic stops
related to the recovery of a handgun, only about
7% to speeding. I'm wondering if you could share,
what is our hope, what is our aim that traffic stops
are accomplishing within the broader ecosystem of police work and public
safety?
Great question, Alderman, and let me respond by
saying,
what you're speaking of right now was basically an old strategy.
A strategy that I have not adopted.
When we look at traffic stops,
here's what we should be looking for.
Probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
Now,
sometimes what we deem a traffic stop could be an investigatory stop
where someone is accused of committing a crime,
and we've identified this individual who happens to be in a vehicle, which
means we would have to pull that individual over.
And then there are your traffic stops, traffic violations.
Now, it has never been my
position that we're making traffic stops to
find guns.
Right? When we make traffic stops,
if
during that traffic stop, there's something in plain view that an officer sees,
or the officer discovers something
when running someone's name,
a warrant, things of that nature, then officers have to follow up on those
particular things. But we're training our officers right
now to understand the constitutionality behind
making traffic stops, and why we're stopping people, and how we're
going to do that respectfully. So, we have already given our
officers training. There's
my ideology around traffic stops from the top
down. I've put that information out there so everybody understands where I
stand with this. But we also have training going on.
We've teamed up with the University of Chicago, and we're coming up with training
right now, and I'll let them talk a little bit about the training.
So I'll turn it over to the Bureau of Constitutional Police.
Chief Angel Novalis, Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform.
At superintendent's direction, we are in the
process of developing a two-day, eight-hour course for our
officers surrounding traffic stops.
One day, eight hours, will be the fundamentals of
constitutional policing. It would be understanding
constitutional policing and its purpose, the interplay between law and the people,
and the police profession. The second day of that course is going to
be an eight-hour scenario-based training, where officers
have the opportunity to apply a multitude of policies when engaging in
traffic stops, as well as ensuring that traffic stops are
constitutional in nature, and that officers understand the
legal burdens to engage in any activity during a traffic stop.
I appreciate that tremendously. That is good news to a lot of people who care about
this work. I'm going to use my last six seconds to go over and now have a round
two for Alderman Irvin.
So
I was greatly encouraged to see the decrease
in what I will call non-investigatory traffic
stops during your time in office.
I was distressed to see reporting that
suggested an undercount or under-reporting of traffic stops by
groups like Injustice Watch, who suggest that we weren't completing
these state-mandated forms. They are long forms, as we
had previously heard,
but it's discouraging to hear reporting like that.
When people report on an undercount of as many as 200,000
traffic stops,
do you feel that that's accurate reporting?
And if not, how do we combat that kind of information?
How do we make sure that we're appropriately and accurately
putting forward data on traffic stops?
At some point, I'll turn it over to Noé Flores to
talk about that a little, but
here's what's important for our department.
We have to make sure that there's accuracy in reporting.
And what we need, and what we're working on right now, and what
we're trying to obtain, is a new records management system.
We have too many systems that are not talking to each other, and that could lead to
inaccurate reporting.
And it could lead one to believe that we're hiding something
or we're not being upfront. So we need
to do
a better job of providing our officers out there
with the technology that's necessary, that's going to make
reporting easier,
more accurate. These officers would end up spending less
time in the district
completing multiple reports. And that
a new RMS system would be very valuable to us.
But I'll turn it over to Noe Flores just to talk a little bit about that.
Yeah. Hi, Alderman. Noe Flores, Strategic Initiatives Division, Chicago Police
Department. So the sup is right. There is obviously a
discrepancy between the traffic stops on the CAD, which is the traffic stops being
conducted by the officers, and then those blue cards, those CSSS cards.
Part of the issue is there's a lag in the ability of people to
enter those cards. So it's
not that
we're purposely not trying to get that information in, is that it does take a
little bit to get all those cards in.
So if you look at year over year, eventually we do get more of those cards
in. So while right now, yes, there's a discrepancy of about 200,000.
If you look at previous years, like 2023, that number's down to a little less than
100,000. Same thing in 2022. So it's not perfect, but
there is a bit of a lag in us being able to get that information entered.
Have we caught up with that lag, sir?
Excuse me?
Have we caught up with that lag, sir?
As of yet, no, not yet. And part of it, like the sup says, the RMS system's going
to be helpful because right now
somebody has to go in there, put that information in.
There's a regurgitation of the same information being produced.
So the RMS system should help in some of that.
Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Superintendent. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you.
Thank you, Alderman.
So we'll go to the
23 class. We'll start with-- What's the first?
I know.
You're not alone.
Alderman Chico,
followed by Alderman Harris.
Thank you. Thank you, Chair, and I'll be brief.
First of all, I want to thank you for your work and the whole team for their work.
Obviously, we know my background and we know where I come from, but to
see you put in the work every day and to make the strides you've been
making,
it definitely provides me comfort knowing that you're at the helm of this and
you're steering the ship in the right direction.
Thank you.
I wanted to turn real quick to
your opening statements.
I know we talked about it and touched on it before, but
mental health.
Being an officer, having my sister and brother-in-law in the department,
I have conversations with them a lot surrounding mental health and
them missing important days in their children's lives and
family's lives.
How do we strengthen that
on a day-to-day basis? And what I mean by that is, when they're going into
work, how do we provide them assistance each and
every day?
Well,
a great question. And that's one of the things that we're focused on. All right?
And that has to start with our leadership
recognizing certain things when our officers
go to supervisors with information.
Because we're asking these officers to be open and honest about what's going on in
their lives, and if we're going to ask them to do that, the leadership
has to be willing to do something about it.
So we have to make sure that we step up and we're providing that care around that.
Now what we have done this year,
as opposed to the previous years, is that we've
reduced ... greatly the number of day-off cancellations,
mandatory day-off cancellations for officers.
When we know that an officer is trying to make a family
event or something of that nature, even if it's when days off are being canceled,
we're taking requests into consideration.
And under
certain circumstances where we know that this is extremely
important,
we'll honor those things. Obviously, we have
to truly analyze that to make sure that we're
getting the right people the time off.
We're also making sure that we're directing those people in the right direction,
right? Sending them to EAP, making sure that they have access to those
resources.
And our leadership. So,
clearly, our leadership
needs to have a better understanding of how to deal with the officers.
And that's part of the leadership training that we've provided
for our command staff and for our supervisors, and we're
going to continue down that road. So you're 100% right.
We have to make sure that we're on top of it.
We have to make sure that we're paying attention to what officers are asking us.
Because to ignore that is ignoring the things that are truly
important to these people when it comes to wellness.
So we're going to continue to work in that direction.
Thank you. Thank you for that.
And I apologize if I missed this. Victim Services Unit, could you talk a little
bit more
around the resources supporting that?
Okay. A couple of things. I'll let
Chief Rizzotti talk about the importance of victim services, and then we'll
talk about the numbers.
Annette Rizzotti, Chief, Bureau of Detectives.
I just want to speak, I know we heard a little earlier, and if Chief Novalis wants
to add anything,
he may, around some of the questions we got around the
reorg in the budget. But one of the things I want to talk about is our Family
Liaison Office, and that is specifically the support we
are providing to survivors of those victims of homicides.
In the aftermath, what are we doing to try to ensure that they are connected
to resources, that they are informed about what to expect with the
investigative process, and that they have a point of contact
regarding that investigation in addition to the detective.
The other thing we're trying to do when we're talking about victim support services
is to empower the individual that we are encountering.
And what we've really found out of our office is that when we're able to bring them
together through a number of events,
again, what we often hear, it is not the experience that anybody wanted
to bring them together. But they are able to bring their experiences together
and to move forward because they have that in common.
So that's the role we see for providing support to the
families of those who are murdered.
Chief Angel Novalis, Office of Constitutional Policing.
On the Office of Victim Services within the Office of Constitutional
Policing, our main objective is to ensure that victims of crime or gender-based
violence, that they're provided with a warm handoff to local resources to
help address the trauma. Some of the investments that that we've made is
where it's going to have an assistant director at the helm.
We're looking at four program directors, along with having victim specialists to
help address the needs of the victims of crimes.
We're also looking at victims that have been subject to
gunshots to provide that same kind of resources so that they feel that they
are supported, that they can deal with the traumas, and then they can continue on
with their lives. So when you look at it, it's a multifaceted approach between the
detective division, the Office of Community Policing, and the new Victim
Services Unit that will be coming forward.
All right. You want to talk about the
numbers? Awesome. Is there any numbers?
Thank you.
You good? Okay.
I also
wanted to give a quick shout-out. I understand today is Deputy Chief
Joyce's last day.
It is.
I want to thank him for the work he's done over decades and
provided. Once again, thank you, Supe, for the work you're doing, and
thank you everybody in the box for the work you do and will continue to do.
Thank you all.
Chico? Chair Harris?
Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody.
How are you?
To the family of slain Officer
Martinez
from the incident that happened in the Eighth Ward in the Sixth District,
the residents of the Eighth Ward express our sincere sorrow on the loss of a young
life.
To the family of the officers, to the staff, to the leadership of Chicago
Police Department, we, the Eighth Ward, are praying for you and with you as you
go through a really difficult period.
We must, as a body, as a city, as a state,
as a nation, figure out how to get these guns of mass destruction off
our streets. I think that we need to be pushing forward with
some kind of legislation that we send off and resolutions that we send to
different levels of government to ask
how do we protect the lives of the people that are sworn every day to
serve and protect us. So that's my prayer, that every officer
gets back home the same way that he left.
He or she.
And
most of my questions have been answered, so now I'm into just stuff that I want to
say thank you about. Thank you for
keeping your word almost immediately to have the Area
Two meetings that you have, where everybody who works
with us from Area Two is present at a meeting going through
information. It's become a real bonding for many of
us aldermen to show up for those meetings.
I know Alderman Chico never missed
anything related to what we do as a Chicago Police Department.
So I've got four wonderful commanders, and I can't
Thank you enough for having great leaders.
Third District, Melvin Branch, who is just amazing.
Fourth District, which is the center of the war, Keith Melmine.
Fifth District, our newest person, Carla Johnson.
Woo-hoo for the girls.
Yeah, Carla. I got Carla back.
And for people that don't know it, when I was a very new officer,
she was the assistant to one of my commanders,
and that's where I first met her almost 18 years ago.
And of course, to Mike Tate and to the Sixth District
family, again, a shout-out and lots of prayers and stuff.
This is what happens when you come on the back end and people get ahead of you, and
they get to answer all the questions, and I hate to be redundant.
But again, I just want to say thank you,
because what you do is a thankless job, and people don't appreciate
it. And I want you to know that there is a group of people down here in City
Council that really appreciate everything that you do.
And not always understand, but know that it's a very
dangerous job, and the
type of mental struggles that happen on this job, and the type of stuff that you
see.
I'm telling you, you all have my prayers every day.
So again, I'm redundant. I'm be that old lady that keep repeating herself.
Praying for you guys. Thank you for everything that you do.
Thank you, Your Honor.
Thank you, Chair Lopez. Let's go to the class of '15.
We'll go with Lopez.
What's the A stand for?
A.
Huh?
What? What? I just...
Raymond-
Awesome
Oh, okay. Raymond Awesome Lopez. Okay. All right. Okay.
Good afternoon, Chairman, members of the committee, superintendent, to all your
team here, welcome.
Number of budget issues were answered, especially with regards to some of the
switch-up between crime victims, community policing, and such, so
I appreciate that. But I do have
a couple things I want to run past.
We spoke earlier about CAPS. One of our colleagues brought up CAPS
and community policing and some of the outreach that's going on with
regards to
the absence of
the technology that we know
helped us when people didn't call 911.
A number of my colleagues and
I have raised this previously when it comes to CAPS, and I know
we still have the whole CAPS team,
but
our districts are not having consistent
published CAPS meetings that warrant that
louder voice that you spoke of before the break.
What are we doing to ensure that every district, all
22 districts, all beats, are having consistent,
clearly advertised, and supported CAPS
meetings to get that community policing conversation back on track
again?
So,
I'll come back, circle back. I'm going to push that question over to
Director Brooks and
Angel Novalis, Chief Novalis-
Yeah
... just to talk about it a little bit, and then I'll talk about my ideology.
And you only have 30 seconds to answer, please. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Alderman. Director Glen Brooks, Office of Community Policing.
Every district is required to have a minimum of six
beat meetings per year along with
regular DAC meetings, also at a minimum of six,
but usually they're held once a month.
To continue publishing-
So, I'm going to have to stop you right there.
So when we say six beat meetings, are we saying that
any six in the district, or each beat has to have at least six meetings?
To be very clear, every beat must have six meetings
minimum per year as outlined in the consent decree.
Okay. Because we know that some are doing it quarterly or
not at all. So okay, continue please.
Yeah. We audit, matter of fact, this Friday is they are
due to turn in all of their beat meeting notes,
agendas, and their sign-ins for those meetings.
Additionally, I assign every area coordinator to monitor
that on a monthly basis, and we meet weekly to
review those beat meetings.
But and to your point, it is the responsibility of that
district to hold those meeting consistence with those neighborhoods.
So if they need to have it every month, they need to have it every month, and they
need to be publishing it widely. We have-
So, if I may.
Go right ahead.
Because
I've heard these answers before,
and when we have our commanders say, "I don't have staff for these meetings,"
and you have things canceled, we've seen where meetings in...
I love my Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth District, but as you know from
Seven, but if you have a published meeting and then all of a sudden it's canceled
because we don't have officers because they've been pulled, possibly even for some
of these events we talked about earlier,
then
that conversation and that connectivity's just never going to happen.
So,
I appreciate
Glen's response because it's the textbook response.
But the actuality and what's going on on the ground are not the same
thing.
So Alder, just to address your question, that's why I cut
in. Look,
here's what we're not going to do. What we're not going to do is
talk about what we know should happen, and we're going to talk about what's
going to happen.
So at this point, since you've brought this to our attention, we're going to
make sure that we're following everything that's in that consent decree,
and we will make sure that someone is held responsible and held accountable
for making sure that these beat meetings occur. That's going to start at the top.
Every single district commander, we'll pull them in.
They're going to have a conversation with us about how these beat meetings are
supposed to occur and when they're going to occur.
So if they are published, unless there's something catastrophic or some major
emergency going on where we have no choice but to cancel it, there's no
reason why we should be talking about personnel under those circumstances.
So we will make sure that they are-
Setting up those beat meetings and manning them properly from this point on.
Thank you, Superintendent.
I appreciate the department's commitment to advocacy and glad to see that we're
coalescing in a more cohesive manner.
I would recommend that we do the same for troubled buildings.
You need to have a troubled buildings unit that I think reports to you,
and then fans out to the districts.
Because leaving that in the district's hands, that's another one of those areas
where it gets some do, some don't, and we know we have plenty of troubled buildings
across all districts. Same for business liaison officers.
That was something that kind of morphed into your
predecessor's DCOBs, and some districts have them,
some don't. There are things that we know that work well that are missing that I
think that we just have to enshrine, whether it's directly under you, that
fans out to the districts. But I don't think districts should be left
to their own devices on these matters,
especially when it comes to schools and having someone assigned as
a school liaison. Regardless what CPS says,
we know our parents want to see presence at many of our schools.
So I think that it'd be great for us to be able to commit to that
just as much as we do that warm, welcoming hand that I heard
offered for victims.
I appreciate the commitment, your commitment, and your command
team's commitment to officer wellness.
I would encourage additional
opportunities for organizations like
Light the Line, which you know was founded by
Carlos Yanez and mom of Ella French,
Elizabeth.
That kind of support and those kind of vehicles to be on site.
We saw during
DNC, our officers should be able to have a respite
on site where they don't have to go, leave their station and do more things like
that. A number of us are trying to work with 2FM to help provide additional
vehicles for you and your department to be able to use.
But whatever advocacy you need from us or support that you can give to help push
that along, because I think that those kind of things really matter to our
officers.
I asked my staff while we were here having this conversation earlier
about
D case, and they said that unfortunately,
it's our understanding that you could only object when it comes to whether there's
previous abuses to alcohol, criminal activity, gang activity,
or traffic concerns.
I know we talked about the
reimbursement portion of that, but has your special
events team or unit that handles those permits ever added on additional
ancillary concerns on those permitting processes?
I will turn that over
to the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
I'm sure he can shed a little light on some of that, having been the incident
commander on a lot of the events.
30 seconds.
It's Chief Dwayne DeVries from the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
Yes, we work with Deputy Chief Jill Stevens.
She's got the special events section that gets all the permits that come in.
And we have, so when a permit gets filed, the district commander is actually
the one that signs off on it if it's going to occur in his district.
And they, in conjunction with talking with Jill and myself, bring up
their concerns as well, and they will put that in the plan.
Like, the security plan isn't good enough, they will kick that permit back and say,
"We're not accepting this this time unless you clarify and fill this out." But
there are, besides the reasons you mentioned, if there's a safety
concern, we can deny the permit. Obviously alcohol.
If there's been any previous violence at the event that they haven't addressed in
the new plan, we can decline that permit, and that's why we do a lot
of the after action meetings that we have with OAMC and all the city agencies.
And the problem with the after action is you identify these problems that you
mentioned and these reimbursement things, and then when we go forward the next
year, they don't get addressed in that new permit problem.
So if we may, Superintendent, have through the chair, the
after action reports for the events that we are also talking about, the
reimbursement issues, so that we could see what has been provided by the
department in response to some of the events that we've had.
Just so that we get a better, fuller picture of some of the things that may not be
on the actual application in order to address that with D case to create a more
robust conversation at the point of permit
applications.
With regards to our police officers,
in our book, in this book,
Chairman,
on page 121 it says we have 10,702
members of the Bureau of Patrol. Is that all police officers?
Is that all patrol officers?
Yes.
No. That would not be all patrol officers.
So how many patrol officers do we currently have?
We'll get you that number through the chair.
Okay.
Yes. Thank you.
How many have we lost to the suburbs?
That I don't have that exact number.
If we could get through the-
I don't know if
Joi Brown, would you have that or could you get it to him through the chair?
If I could get that through the chair, as well as the number of lateral returns.
And then lastly, as well as any retirees that we've been able to
put back online
to help with non-officer positions.
Well, I can tell you that we have.
We have done that, and they have a level of expertise for what they were hired
back for.
Okay.
Especially in training.
And if you need a number on that, we'll get that one-
Yes, please
... through the chair also. And lastly, when we talk about the Department of
Buildings,
we
have a really
great working relationship with Marlene Hopkins, her team.
Mm-hmm.
We work together very well and will continue to do that.
And
we're taking seriously what you're saying.
Okay.
And then Chairman, I will take a round two because I've got one more thing, but
I'll wait my turn
Unless you want me to do it right now and I'm done.
Only if you tell us your middle name.
Middle name is Anthony. Thank you.
Middle name Anthony. All right. What
did you say, Nick?
Is it-
No, I'm not going to pull the 10-part question on the superintendent.
You're good for those. But we'll-
... like keeping you around, man. You make it nice in here.
And you have good questions. So,
Alderman Taylor.
Thank you, Chairman. Hey, Superintendent, how you doing?
I'm good, Alderman Woman, how you doing?
I'm okay. So of course, a condolences to you
and other officers. It's hard to lose coworkers in this
work. And so I think Alderman Tyler Ferrell kind of asked my
question. Is there something in the consent decree or something that you're doing
to make it mandatory for officers to
see psychiatrists or talk to therapists?
Well, right now,
and
we would have to talk to
general counsel about
making it mandatory at this point.
But what we do,
there are times where we can
direct an officer to go and seek help.
And we've done it on multiple occasions.
When we see an officer that's suffering through some things,
and we see that there's behavior that's different from the
norm of that officer, that is the responsibility
of everyone around that officer to make that
observation and then to recommend some level of help.
And in most cases, our officers have been reaching out a lot more to
EAP,
our employee assistance program.
More of our officers have been showing up to talk to the clinicians.
And we've gotten feedback from a lot of our officers
who will speak more openly about having spoken
to someone and getting some type of therapy.
So we're getting there.
We want to make sure that
we've taken the stink off of it,
can't think of a better word to describe it, of the old way of
thinking that someone should feel some level of shame for going to
seek out help. We want our officers to know that it actually takes
courage to do that and to seek out help, to
recognize when you're not at your best.
Yeah. So I want to reiterate two things that were said.
Alderman Lopez talked about putting back the
business officers.
I'm in the second, the third, the seventh, and the ninth.
Shout out to those commanders. But I want to see them go back to the work where
they actually talk to those business owners and give them support they
need. We're having a big problem with loitering
in the front of these businesses. A lot of times there's a shooting.
There's been a couple of them in my ward by a gas station.
And while that gas station provides a service, it also is not doing its
best to call those designated numbers that they should be calling
because they are not sitting in those meetings often enough.
And so
pre-COVID, those meetings were going very well.
I want to see us go back to those.
We'll follow up with you on that-
Okay
... to make sure that that's happening.
Absolutely. They do it a lot in the third
district more than the seventh and the ninth, but I want to see it
citywide, because I think when those business officers, those businesses
feel like they have the support of the police, they do a better job at
saying what is actually going on in the community.
I was looking at the budget and on a bunch of these lines.
I'm on page
306. What type of livestock y'all got where y'all
went from 25,000
to 105,000? What kind of cows and chickens y'all got?
What's this?
Look, I'm looking at it. You know I look at dollars.
You want to go at that, Ryan? See this.
I want to know.
Just take.
Hi, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So we are primarily purchasing horses and then also
canines.
Oh, okay. What
do horses provide as a service to officers?
I get canines, but what's the horse?
Yep.
Just curious.
So the horses,
they do patrol. They do patrol in South Shore, that you also see them
downtown here. You're also having them in large crowds where they'll have an
elevated position so they can see what's happening, and then they also go to a lot
of block parties.
Okay.
I also want to see you all do a better job at working with the Park District and
DK's, because what I found out is they pay for this security, but we wind
up using a lot of our resources. And so while I might not have a ward that has a
lot of activity as far as events, I do have a lot of
reunions and building,
picnics that happen in the ward, and they have become out of
control. And so I want to see some type of
dashboard that you have with-- And I've talked to Alderman
Sposato about us bringing the Park District.
I would love to see you all a part of that conversation because I agree with
everybody else. They use our resources, but we never really know those
activities are going on in the community.
And so I've had the un-luxury to have them have
a stripper party in the middle of my park.
Okay.
I kid you not. We got pictures if you don't believe me.
But
it was a car show with
strippers. You remember that, don't you?
Yeah. We'll take your word for it, Alderman.
It's honestly like you can't make it up.
But also, I have never seen a Park District security.
I never see them. All I see is CPD, and so that's another way that they're
using our resources, and they should be paying for it.
So Alderman, I believe after today, there's going to be
an open conversation across the board between DK's Parks.
And look, I welcome that conversation. I don't like pointing fingers.
What I like to do is get to the bottom of things so that we can all work together
and come up with a cohesive plan that's going to work for
everybody.
So one of the things that I want to say that I feel like you've done well is
stability. In my first four years, I think I saw
seven or eight different commanders. I see you over there, Officer Tally.
She's my girl. Y'all took her away from me, but that's how y'all do.
But I'm glad that you brought stability back into these
districts because it's hard to start working with one commander.
He has a way of doing things, and then you got to jump to another.
And so I want to make sure that we stick to that.
And speaking of that, I want you to work hard at getting you a number two.
I feel like you've done the city a justice
and change, especially when it comes to our young people hanging downtown.
And so let me say thank you, because I don't
see the same chaos I saw four years ago when it came to young people
downtown. And so I think you've gotten a hold on that and we've done a lot
better. Speaking of that, what is CPD doing
with the juvenile detention center?
Because a lot of young people complain about going to sit at the
adult
police station. They only sit there for two hours, and they're right back out.
What are we doing to actually help those young people to kind of go
on a straight path?
I'll turn that question over to the Chief of Detectives. Sir City.
Annette Undercity, Chief, Bureau of Detectives. Good afternoon.
Thank you for the question. Earlier, we were talking about our Youth Intervention
Pathways program. That's the partnership with the Department of
Family and Support Services. And one of the features of that program
is that we have identified five different processing
locations where when an arrest is made,
the juvenile is to be taken directly to that location.
And that is to reduce the time that that young person is in our custody.
We know what we were seeing happen before is that they would go to one location,
they're doing the paperwork there, then you got to travel to another location to
the detective, and this was something that we wanted to make sure that we got done.
So right now we have these locations in the First District, the
Sixth District, the Seventh District, the 15th District and the 16th District.
And those are the spaces that we've identified and then embedded at those
locations, we have an assigned detective on both
days and afternoons. On our overnight shift,
we have our detectives who are assigned to the areas who are
trained so that you can still offer the diversion
opportunities. But for the actual location there, that's what
we're doing during the day. So that's one of the things through this program we've
tried to address.
I want to see you all do a lot more work with the folks who do
intervention. So we got, of course,
GoodKids MadCity. We got activists.
We got some good organizations that do work and I would love to see you all
partner. And I know you do some of it, but I don't think it's enough
because there is such a distrust between our communities and the
police and I think that's starting to change a bit, but it's not moving fast
enough to the point of the thing around ShotSpotter.
People don't actually call the police, and I'm guilty of that.
I be like, "Somebody will pick it up. Somebody going to call.
I'm spending my $2.95." So
there's a benefit to us working those groups.
My last question is actually to the lady around detectives.
What is the department doing around missing
Black and brown girls? Those numbers are extremely high.
We're starting to see a lot of posts on social media,
but I don't see a lot of the...
When I'm driving down the expressway, you know how we have the monitors.
It takes too long for us to see it and catch up to it, and by the time we figure it
out, those young girls are long gone.
Annette Undercity, Chief, Bureau of Detectives. I want to thank you.
I know you started a conversation recently about this, and I think it's a
conversation that's going to continue.
And I want to be clear, we share your concern and we see the trends that you're
describing. We know through October of this year, 41% of our
reported missing persons were women of color.
And then when we're looking at the demographic of age, we're just seeing across the
board with young women under the age of 18, that's
52%. So we know where we really want to start to do
this important work. The first thing I'm going to say is we've done a lot of work
around policies and training, and that's where we've got to start with everything,
and you're going to hear it with the consent decree, and that is the culture change
for us.
We've done a lot to make sure that our detectives are prepared, but not just the
detectives. You've got that preliminary response.
You have the initial officer who is showing up in response to that call,
and that they're trained and that they know what questions to ask and how to get
that started so that when our detectives pick up the investigation,
they're now able to take it further.
We have done a few things this year I just want to mention and then talk about a
few things we're looking to do in 2025.
Since the start of this year, as I mentioned, we revised our missing person policy.
As a result of that, we also added a checklist.
This has allowed our officers out in the field to have a reference to
make sure that they are hitting every key thing and asking every key question,
as well as a reference guide to help them and support it.
We've automated our missing person report taking
process, and this is huge because this is expediting and streamlining that
communication across the board, and we were able to do that earlier this year in
June. And then the last thing I want to say is that we know how
taxing this is on the families, and one of the things we made sure we
did this year was
create this missing persons information notice.
This has, again, the most important thing we can do when we are working with
families is make sure they have information on the resources
that are going to support them through this process.
Now when we're going forward to next year, there's a few things we want to do to
extend that work. One of our key priorities is making sure
that we have investigative analysts.
These are non-sworn members who are trained.
Earlier I heard a question about how are department members coming back.
These are people who are really skilled investigators that now when we have these
long-term missing person investigations, we can really go and
look and see if there's more that we can do with it.
We're looking to develop a training as a refresher, especially on these
policy changes. And we are going to be looking to work with Office of
Community Policing, that you'll see in the budget with all those advocate and
specialist positions. One of those is specifically for a missing person
specialist who's going to work with these families.
And then the last thing I want to say that we're really
looking forward to getting moving is a missing youth
intervention program. That's when we're seeing these young people that are
repeatedly missing. When they are gone for extended periods of time,
what are we able to do to intervene and to get them
help? So that's some of what we've done, some of what we're looking
to do, and again, it's just the start of the conversation, and I know we're going
to hear more from you and people who have been affected by this.
I want a round too, but I do want the
where the youth are to be dropped off, those districts.
Can you send that to our office? And also can you send the thing around what people
do in missing persons? Because I think a lot of times we don't know what the
protocol is and actually we don't know how to
report you calling about a missing person. It's erratic.
You don't know what you're saying. You don't know what you're doing.
And so can we get that so that we're sharing it with our community?
Sure. We can get that to you, Alderwoman.
We take what you're saying seriously, and as you can tell, the work is
being done right now. Now lastly, I just wanted to mention something about the
youth and you said the youth aren't downtown the way that they were, but
you also mentioned working with some of our outreach group.
We work with our CVI groups, and we've worked with those CVI
groups when it comes to those teenagers.
They've partnered with us. We get to those locations when we got
the intel that they're going there, and we get there before them.
But I'd like to say this one particular thing about
how you bring something like that down.
There has to be accountability, and there has to be accountability for our kids, no
matter who they are, no matter where they're from.
Because it's actually an insult to those kids and their
intelligence to say that they shouldn't be held accountable because they don't know
the difference between right and wrong.
And when we put those accountability measures in place, they
think twice now about doing what they're doing.
So there has to be accountability.
That doesn't mean that we lock them up and throw away the key.
It just lets them know that there are consequences for
your actions. And as long as we do that and we continue to do that,
we'll bring some of this down. These kids are way smarter than we're giving them
credit for. And to give them a pass because we say they're
impoverished is just an insult to them, and it's an insult to their
intelligence.
Thank you, Superintendent. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you,
Alderman Taylor. Vice Chair Lee.
Thank you, Chair. Superintendent Snelling, thank you for being here, and
to your entire leadership team, thank you for all that you do every day.
Thank you.
On behalf of the 11th Ward, of course, we extend our condolences on the loss of
our recent officer.
We can't say enough about how much our community supports the work that you
do. We have a majority of the ward, as you know, is in the 9th
District,
and we have a little bit of the 1st and the 12th Districts as
well.
Can't say enough great things about those staffs.
We had a double homicide in the ward, just a couple blocks from my front door,
actually. And the officers did a wonderful job on
making sure that the community knew and understood that that was a targeted
incident. I know communication is really difficult while investigations are
going on.
That's where I'm going to start. I've got a lot of questions, but I'll start here.
I know with more than 200 detectives this year, can we
talk about improvements on closure rates with the increased personnel and the
difference that's made?
I'll turn that over to
Chief of Detectives.
Ansonetta City, Chief Bureau of Detectives. Can you repeat that question, please?
Yeah, so just with the additional detectives, right?
I think we're going to be over 200 before the end of this year.
Are we over 200 already?
Yes. No, 200 will be sworn in.
Oh, yeah.
This is their last week.
Okay, great.
So next week they'll be sworn in.
And we've been steadily increasing over the course of the last year.
Can we talk about improvements on closure rates with the increased personnel and
the difference that it's made to have more personnel
in the detective ranks?
Yes. And thank you. It's a great question.
And so I am going to talk about detectives, but I also want to talk about
investments that have been made in the support infrastructure for these
detectives. And I also want to recognize my predecessors who have done a lot of
work over the course of this past five years to put down this
foundation that has now brought us to this increase that we're seeing today.
So back in 2019, a report came out with a number of recommendations about
how we could improve our homicide investigations.
A lot of that was around staffing and
reopening the areas. As you may know, we were three, and now we're back to
five areas. But now with the detectives that we have, and when we're talking
about wanting to staff those areas,
we now have our detectives that are in closer proximity to these scenes that
they're going to. And we all know that those earliest hours of an
investigation are key for identifying witnesses, canvassing,
collecting evidence, and it's really been very significant for us.
We announced earlier this year the start of a homicide team pilot
program, and this was one of the last key recommendations we were
really able to implement, which has allowed us to put in every
area dedicated teams that are on a call-out schedule.
And what that means is, with the number of teams in each of these areas, they
are working for a full week, and they are on call for any
homicide that comes in during that time.
And then they have the next five weeks to follow up, not only
on any homicides that may have happened in that past week, but on any
of the other information that they're getting back.
We know that investigations can be lengthy, and it's a lot to manage, and this
schedule is allowing them to manage that process.
And they also have ownership of these cases right from the start.
So with these additional members
We're also able to provide them the structure that's going to allow them to
be successful.
We've also been able to build out our area technology center.
There's been investments in officers who are there making sure that our homicide
detectives are able to have access to the video and the digital evidence
that's key for these investigations.
We've had members assigned as homicide investigative support teams.
We have non-sworn members who are going through those videos, going through
digital evidence. All of these are really key positions.
So even as it's so important that we have these 200 detectives, I
also want to say we're really pleased to see the investment that has been there in
these other roles. And we know that that's having an impact on the
investigations and the closings and the clearance rate.
That's great. Can you talk about the other
sort of subgroups? You mentioned homicides.
I know there's financial crimes as well.
There's all kinds of crimes that happen, but I understand the focus on homicides.
But can you talk a little bit about the different subgroups that you have?
Antoinette Orsi, Chief Bureau of Detectives, and I would be pleased to share a
little bit about it. So,
for anyone who's unfamiliar with the organization of our bureau,
just like patrol, we have five areas.
And inside each of those areas, we have sections that are responsible
for homicides, violent crimes, special victims,
and property. And when we get outside of the
area, we're going to see something that came up a little bit earlier about
our commitment to strengthening our forensics, and that is also
under our Bureau of Detectives. And so, that includes our evidence
technicians. We were able to administer an exam last month
where we had close to 1,200 members who showed up and expressed their interest, and
we're looking forward to building out that particular function.
We have our firearms lab, which is under forensics.
That's the work I was talking about earlier, where they're taking all of the
ballistic evidence and making sure that it's getting processed in a way that
is going to be helping these detectives with their leads.
We mentioned earlier our investigative response team.
But when you're talking about financial crimes, I want to mention and give credit
to...
You know how this is. There's some sections, they don't get that recognition.
Our Central Investigations Division, they are doing tremendous work, and you are
going to see that they do major accidents. They do arson.
They do financial crimes like you described.
They're out there trying to help take people into custody through their fugitive
apprehension. Organized retail crime, where we saw these awful incidents
back in 2020, trying to make sure that we're able to collect video and hold people
accountable. So those are some of the different areas.
And then, I'm going to be remiss, there's probably a million things.
There's great things happening. But youth investigations, those are the things
we're seeing, criminal registration, all under the detectives.
That's great. And thank you for going over that, because I wasn't familiar with how
you guys are organized.
One of the things that we hear very often at our ward office, I don't know about
some of my colleagues, but very often victims of crimes
will just lament the lack of communication from
CPD. And oftentimes what we're in the position of doing is like, the police are
really inundated, and I think if there's not an update to provide to you, there's
not likely anything to report back.
I'm interested in coming up with ways that we can support each other.
And because we're the frontline to the constituents, they're
more likely to come to us than try to track you down
at a police district or anything like that.
So if there's anything that we can do to improve, even if it's just
on a regular cadence. We've got an open case.
There's nothing really happening with it.
At least a touch point for communication, because when people aren't communicated
with, it makes them feel like nothing's happening and that the police
don't care at the end of the day. And we know that's not the case.
We know that's absolutely not the case.
But in the absence of a communication tool or
a touch point,
people are left kind of feeling like, "We don't need to call the police.
Nothing's going to happen with it anyway." And I think everybody in this room would
agree that's not what we want for our city.
That's not why you guys and your teams get up every day and do these jobs.
So if there's something that we can do together.
I don't know if there's a position like that for communications with victims.
I know that there's a big focus on
victim support, but I don't necessarily know that that support is
primarily laid in communication, which is the thing that I'm trying to zero in on.
We can absolutely work on communication, just making sure
that we get that up, because expanding victim services is going to help us there
anyway.
So, if we can broaden the communication, that'd be a lot better, because that's the
focus.
That's great.
With the two minutes that I have left right now, I'm going to just pick up
on the special events and festivals.
I may have missed it earlier, and I know several people have asked about it.
But
what sort of
factors help determine whether or not CPD signs off on an event
permit?
Is there some sort of framework for that?
I know, as we talk to police commanders and stuff about just the
real high demands on our police districts, especially during the
height of the summer festival season, it gets increasingly more difficult.
And obviously, it's something that we're very interested in because we don't feel
like people are paying enough for the services that our city's providing.
So can someone talk about how those decisions are made and
is there a max number that we can reach for critical mass before we
have to call off people's
vacation times and that sort of thing?
Chief Dwayne DeVries from the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
So, a lot of factors go into that. First off, the headcount, what the anticipated
attendance will be for that event, which then has to have a different type of
security plan. As the amount of people go up, the security plan goes up.
The type of event it is. If it's, let's say, concerts, the type of
acts that are going to come in. Obviously, different groups bring different
problems and different kinds of crowds.
So all that's taken into effect. The size of the event, as in that-
the population of the event, but the actual size, the perimeter and everything that
they're going to build out. And depending on that type of event, like Lollapalooza,
they have to bring in different kind of fencing due to the fence jumpers that we've
had in years past,
which makes the security plan bigger as well.
And then
always when you add alcohol, so the permit for alcohol brings in a whole
another line of security,
just not only for the
booths themselves, but then the money runs that have to be done, and the money
that's being made off that alcohol and the transport of that.
And then
the other effects are the district commanders themselves.
That's what they get to sign off on the permit because they've got to take into
account that, all right, if this event's going to take resources from my district
or is it, as we spoke about before, are we going to pull in people on their day
off? Are we going to cancel the other?
Are we going to pull tag teams or different officers from other districts in,
and then have to supplement that on the back end?
So that all comes into account of what an event is.
But like we spoke about before, the problem is when those events get signed off on,
none of that is discussed with the police department.
So like if you told me that we're going to have a Lollapalooza type event,
I know that it's going to take 300 officers a day just on
the day shift to cover it, and then you got another 500 that have to come in at the
afternoon shift. So, it's 800 officers a day we're losing to an event like
that, which they don't take into account.
I definitely think there's some room for improvement in terms of how all of this
gets coordinated. It's certainly unfair to the police department to just kind of
lay this at your lap and say, "Okay, this is happening now.
Figure it out."
So what I was trying to get at is, do you have a say ever to say no?
Like, we actually don't have the right level of staffing for this.
We don't think that this should happen.
And it seems to me that in the course of the approvals, you guys should be involved
a lot earlier in that process.
I'll take a round two for later, Chairman. Thank you.
Thank you. Vice Chair.
Alderman Moore, followed by
Alderman Nugent.
Thank you, Chairman. First, and I think protocol was established,
our condolences on behalf of the 17th Ward
to Officer
Martinez and his family. Definitely to our Sixth District family,
who had to deal with that, but the entire CPD family.
Our prayers continue
to be with you all.
Want to say, Superintendent, thank you so much for the work that you're doing.
I cannot help but,
community wise, yes, a lot of stuff has gotten better and getting better.
But to see that the police morale has gone in a direction,
in a positive direction that it has gone in, is a big
tribute to that. And so thank you. When I talk to the
rank and file, they are just from what it
was a couple of years ago, it's a total difference.
So
I just want to commend you on that work as well as
my commanders.
Sixth District, Mike Tate,
Seventh District, Louis Courts, and Eighth District, Brian Spring, and the team
that they have in working with me.
They have great teams over there, and I appreciate what they do.
And also even to, she's my first deputy, Senora
Benn,
that doing a just great job whenever I need additional resources.
I've said it publicly, if I've said it private, I can't help but to thank you all
for the support you all gave myself and other residents
of the Seventh District when we
camped out
on 73rd Street. Just found out the other day,
they're continuing to hit it over there.
Constituents was calling just the other day saying, "Thank you
very much." So I want to relay that on that 73rd block
between Racine and Loomis. So as we continue to just pay attention over
there, I just want to say, continue to do that, and I appreciate it
so much.
Thank you, Alder.
It helps a lot.
And I'm not going to go back to this because I think I heard your answer, and it
was about the vacancies of the Office of Constitutional
Policing, and I think there was an Office of Community
Policing Commander as well that was vacant.
And I think your answer was you're waiting to just try to get the
right person in those positions, correct?
That's correct.
Those positions are too important to just fill the spots.
People from the outside looking in will always have their thoughts about
it, but they're on the outside, so they have no idea what it takes
to make sure you have, and you've developed the right people for those
positions.
Absolutely. So thank you for that answer.
Back to one of the points
Chairman
was making in terms of, Jeanette Taylor was making in terms of Chicago
Park District police. So we used to have actual cars.
I used to see more of those. So do we still have-- I guess I didn't hear that
clearly. Do we still have police cars
assigned to the Chicago Park District, or
are they assigned to certain parts? Is it on an as needed basis?
I'm trying to understand that.
I'll send that over to the Chief of Patrol.
Good afternoon, Alderman, and thank you for the question and thank you for the
words of support for the officers and their families.
So daily, it's based upon the manpower for that day.
If we have additional manpower that we can put up a park car, the
commanders, at their discretion, will put up that park car.
That being said, also, if there's a special attention or any events in that park,
they will assign personnel to that event along with, hopefully, the park car.
Okay. So it was different from what it used to be in terms of a car
actually being assigned to a park.
So at that time, and I remember when I was in seven-
Right
... when the manpower in each district was almost at a maximum,
there was a designated car for the park.
Yeah.
You had a designated mall car. Now we work around those things based
on priority calls. So we
would love to have a park car or a mall car, but if we have
a backlog or calls for service, we need those cars up and running and going to
jobs and providing service for people.
Okay.
Oh, wait.
One more.
And just to add something, so if you look at 305, you'll see our
reimbursable overtime. That helps cover parks.
And then just to throw it over to Deputy Chief Jill Stevens, who makes sure that
those positions get filled.
Okay. And
two more points I want to make, and I know they're somewhat sensitive,
but it's important to me because I never want to be out there putting out bad
information.
As you know,
ShotSpotter has been near and dear to the hearts of my constituents,
which made it near and dear to my heart,
but also to me for the police as well.
The reports, in terms of Officer
Martinez car stopping,
is there any evidence to support that he was responding to
a shots called, and that's why that stop was made?
I heard that report, and I just wanted to verify it because I don't want to be
putting out false information.
Well,
we won't get too much into it, but what I will do is have
Chief Ricity talk about the chain of events that occurred
that night.
Antoinette Ricity, Chief, Bureau of Detective.
And thank you very much for asking a question so that the correct information is
out there. We had a press conference where we were able to announce the charges.
The incident itself stemmed from a traffic stop.
Our offender was in a vehicle that was blocking
the roadway. Now, prior to that stop, they were responding
to a different assignment, but that was unrelated to the
reason that they initiated this particular stop.
Okay. Thank you. And I just wanted to be clear because I never want to be putting
out-
No, we appreciate it
... false information. And my last question is around when we talk about
with traffic stops.
I want you to help put that in context
for me, because when people are talking about it, or advocates are coming to us and
saying, "Look at citywide, they're stopping more African Americans" and
all of this.
And so when we look at data just in the terms of the way that people state
it versus what it is. So if I'm in Inglewood, right, and a crime
is committed in Inglewood, and somebody say a shot, well,
Inglewood is basically 80%
African American. So therefore, if somebody's saying there were shootings
and that this person had a gun, so if officers are out there,
what is the likelihood they're going to stop a high percentage of what?
African Americans. Can you talk more about that,
those data points or whoever handles the data to make sense to that?
Because I don't think it's one for one.
And I am, again, a Black man,
started out in Robert Taylor from Inglewood.
And all of this is sensitive for me, but I also know things we have
to do to protect
the residents of our community.
100%,
Alderman. And
what you're saying,
it has accuracy, but at the same time,
we're analyzing all of this because we're not just
looking at what happens in one particular neighborhood.
We're looking at it citywide and what's occurring across the
city as a whole and how we break down those numbers.
Obviously, training is being developed, and
we have to be mindful of the possibility
that we could be getting something wrong.
But we want to make sure that we're taking corrective action on
those things. Not that anyone is willfully going out
attempting to
stop people for no reason at all. We just want to make
sure that within our training that we are policing
constitutionally, and that when we're stopping people, we have that
reasonable suspicion, we have the probable cause to do so,
and that it's properly documented.
And this is where our training is coming in.
So we're taking everything into consideration.
So we're not going to rule out the fact that some
people have been pulled over unjustifiably, right?
We want to look at that, and we want to make sure that if
we see that anywhere, that we're correcting it, and we're getting our officers
the proper training to make sure that everybody is safe.
But to your point,
there was something
that the chairman mentioned earlier about not throwing the baby out with the
bathwater.
When we say that we're going to fix what we think may
be an issue or what may be an issue by eliminating
an entire process, we put people in-
Danger
... serious danger.
Absolutely.
Right? We put people in serious danger in several ways.
One,
traffic is a major component
of how lives are lost every single day.
And so we have to make sure that we stay on top of that.
I'm sure everybody in here right now on your way to work at some point has seen
someone who just ran right through a red light.
Right. Absolutely.
And didn't stop or get to the red light and decide, I don't want to wait and
drive through. This puts everybody in danger.
This puts our pedestrians in danger. It puts other motorists in danger.
The other thing is that we know that a lot of our crimes that are
being committed in this city, especially our most violent crimes, our drive-by
shootings, our robberies, our homicides
... are happening from stolen vehicles.
And when our officers recognize
the sign of a stolen vehicle,
then those officers have to be allowed to investigate under those
circumstances when they attempt to pull a car over.
So we want these officers to do it constitutionally.
We want them to follow the law as it relates to how we make a
traffic stop, and then we want them to properly document all of this.
This is going to give everyone a better understanding of why an
officer made a traffic stop, and we can explain how it's constitutional and
lawful.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. That's all the questions I have.
Thank you so much.
You good? You don't need a round two? All right. Thank you, Alderman Moore.
Alderman Riley, would you like to... You're good? Okay. Alderman Sposato?
Not in the room.
Alderman Nugent.
It's a weird system today. Don't ask me to explain it.
It's-
But we're going to get to everybody.
It's okay. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good afternoon,
Superintendent, and your team.
Afternoon.
First, of course, condolences for Officer Martinez on behalf of myself
and the entire 39th Ward.
Thank you.
Just horrific.
When I saw everybody in the box today,
I think it's, first of all,
a huge accomplishment that I've worked with almost the
entire crew in the box over the past year, and I think that's a testament to your
leadership,
and to the proactivity that you have, and your department has.
So thank you to everybody in the box today for your partnership and the work
you've done with my office and with the city over the past year.
Part of being in the last part of questioning means that the bulk of my questions
have already been answered, but
there was one thing I wanted to hit on, and I was hoping,
Superintendent, you could describe the process of how you interacted with the
budget office to make the staffing cuts that we have in the
budget presented in your department.
Well,
we had meetings.
Obviously, there are going to be disagreements,
because when you're in charge of something, you
fight for what it is you want to keep.
We do understand that the city is
suffering from a budget crisis, and we do understand that across
the board, there are other
departments and agencies that have to take that
same haircut. We understand that.
But at the same time,
we
made sure that we fought for positions that were
extremely important to us, and those positions that are going to,
number one, keep the city safe, keep our officers safe
while they are keeping the city safe.
And those positions around reform, those positions
around moving our department forward.
Because I'm serious about that, and so is everyone here.
We're serious about transforming the department into
something that everybody can be proud of.
We want our officers to be proud when they walk out and put on that uniform
and go out to do the work
in keeping the city safe. But in order for them to have that pride, that pride
has to stem from the leadership, and we have to give them
something to be proud about. We have to give our communities
things to be proud about. And when we talk about
reform,
it is extremely important that
while we're reforming the department, we do it the right way.
We keep it steady,
that we're measured and making sure that there's a
balance. A balance where the community
feels
comfortable with the changes that we're making, but that they also
feel safe. And that balance also has to be our
officers feeling safe and our officers feeling comfortable about
how they go out and do the job every single day, because they have families to go
home to. So this reform is really important to me, which is why
we focused on those positions that we knew were the most
important to keep reform moving in the right direction.
Okay.
Are we able to use, and this might be for the Office of Public Safety,
are we able to use UASI funds to staff in the
Office of Constitutional Policing?
This is Dan Casey from Office of Public Safety Administration.
To the extent possible, those funds are used for anti-terrorism.
So UASI would be Urban Area Security Grant.
That's generally your anti-terrorism funds.
Okay. Is there any other grant funding that we could utilize
to support additional officers in the Office of Constitutional Policing?
Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So the cuts that we saw within the Bureau of Constitutional
Policing are valued at $10, $11 million.
There's no grant that we would have that would be large enough to absorb that
many positions. We might be able to do one or two here off certain
competitive grants that we might apply for, but there's nothing
systematic that we could do to support that level of staffing.
Okay. I recognize that you guys are having to make
really difficult positions. The feedback that I've gotten from my
community, and from others that I've spoken with, is that
consent decree is our North Star, and
we have to get out from under this court monitor, and the way to do it is through
constitutional policing, and so I think there's concern
that we're not putting
enough resources into that.
Again, I recognize this is a tough budget, but
I am willing to work with you guys and partner with you.
I think this is critically important, and until we get under this mandate,
we're going to be under this cloud for a long time, and I think that
anything we introduce in council
related to public safety should fit under the consent decree.
No new programs, no new nothing surrounding public safety, unless it fits under
those
buckets. And
I support the work you're doing and your team is doing, but I
have grave concern about the resources and the
constitutional policing department.
Well, thank you, Alderman. And I can say that we are
still working
with the administration
to talk about
what's going to be important moving forward.
Thank you.
So we are still in talks about it.
I appreciate that. That's all I have, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Superintendent, and your team.
Thank you.
Thanks, Alderman Nugent. Alderman Riley.
Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon, Superintendent.
How are you, sir?
Good, thanks. Hope you're well. Big fan of the work you're doing,
and certainly everyone in the box does a great job, too.
Many of my questions have already been asked.
I did want to flag for you, for whatever reason,
my office, and I don't believe the
budget committee have received your responses to my budget
memo request. This is an annual memo that I send to all the departments with a
list of questions.
Can you please get that response back to the chair
as soon as possible?
Because that's critical information that we need to help try and
rationalize your budget.
I'm sorry, who did you send that memo to, sir?
It gets copied to your team, but also the budget
office.
Typically, OBM handles follow-up to
gather these things and get them to the chair.
So you could check with your team and the budget folks. That'd be helpful.
We'll do that.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
I know these are policies that you inherited,
and my apologies if this came up early.
I've been upstairs with the mayor's budget folks trying to work out this budget.
A
number of my colleagues and I are very frustrated with the city's
current chase policies.
And I understand why
those were initially adopted,
but it's incredibly frustrating to see, especially these burglary
crews that are ravaging the city right now.
There's a crew working the North Side aggressively on a near nightly basis, if not
multiple.
And we hear about instances where
officers are making a pursuit and then are called off.
And in a lot of cases, we're hearing, especially more recently, about officers
being disciplined for
perceived violations of these various policies.
Intuitively, and one of the reasons why the public, I think, holds
your department and the folks who work in it in such high regard is that when
there's danger,
your folks run to it, and the inclination is to want to catch the bad
guys.
And I don't want you to have to give a lengthy
defense of these things. But is the department
open to changing those policies?
Cook County sheriffs are not bound by the same restrictive policies that
CPD is, and it seems that they're able to go and pursue
more
offenders. Can you speak to that?
I'm always open for improvement and to talk about these
policies and some of the things that are restrictive.
However, at the same time,
the policies as they are now,
number one, the number one thing in a vehicle pursuit is that
we want to make sure that the public is safe, that we're not
engaging in a pursuit that's going to put the lives of
pedestrians and other citizens in danger. That's number one.
However, when we know that we have a clear pursuit
of someone who has committed a serious, heinous,
violent crime, we want to apprehend that
individual. Now,
that being said, that when there's an accident
or it ends in an accident,
our officers are going to be investigated for that,
and then ultimately, officers are going to be held accountable during
those investigations.
The other thing
beyond the number one thing, the safety of our citizens, the safety of
our officers,
lawsuits, because our officers are held liable for it.
Our department is held liable for it.
Mm-hmm.
So the next thing you know, we have multimillion-dollar lawsuits
as a result of that. So there are things across the board
that need to be looked at.
Mm-hmm.
Because the thing that I really have a problem with
is that
when is the offender held accountable-
Yeah
... for his actions?
Yeah. Amen.
And that's one of the things that we have to take into consideration.
Well, I appreciate your comments, Superintendent, and I would just hope that you
do keep an open mind on that.
And we have plenty of questions for the law department.
We have hundreds of lawyers upstairs. We pay a lot of money.
And if folks want to sue the city, have at it.
But the difference is we need to fight the lawsuits.
Settling all these things out, frankly, makes the department look bad, not just the
law department, but frankly, the police department,
because they don't want to deal with the hassle, or they farm this work out to
outside counsel. But we'll take that up with the law department.
That's not your fault.
But bottom line is the city needs to back up its officers in
a far more meaningful way, and especially the leadership of this department.
We want you to go and apprehend the suspects, and to do that,
oftentimes you need to chase them. They don't stick around waiting.
And so there needs to be a balance struck here.
Certainly, no one wants to put officers at risk unnecessarily.
Don't want to be paying out massive lawsuits for irresponsible driving behavior.
I get it.
But we also want to allow your officers to do the great work they're trained to
do, and they do so well when we let them.
So my message to the administration, not you, Superintendent,
is back up our police officers. Don't leave them hanging.
And put to work the many hundreds of lawyers we got upstairs that
aren't seeing these cases through enough.
So I hope that's really the folks up on the fifth floor listening,
less so you, superintendent. I appreciate all the good work
that Chief Heinz's been doing.
I know that managing resources, especially in the overnight shift is
very, very difficult.
We're working in the Central Business District to get some of our problematic
liquor licenses under control. We appreciate you giving us some additional
attention on entertainment resources.
One question I do want to ask on the record, just so I have some
clarity.
Does the department have a specific policy related to off-duty
officers working for late-hour liquor establishments?
We do have a policy on that. And as a matter of fact, is Scott Spears...
Can you talk about that one?
Spears, general counsel to the superintendent.
We do have a policy, sir, and we can get you specifics on that policy through the
chair.
Does the policy allow off-duty officers to work at late-hour liquor establishments?
We'll get you that information through the chair.
Well, it's a yes or a no.
I would like that on the record.
Scott, do you have that?
It's a yes or a no answer.
Yes. Yes, we do.
You do.
Is there a reason you didn't want to share that publicly?
Sir, I wasn't able to answer the question.
I see.
Well, that's something I'd like to revisit with you, superintendent.
I'm
talking about late-hour licenses specifically, not just liquor licenses.
But we've found that the vast majority of our issues with liquor licensees
happen to be those that are late hour.
And again, it's a small number, but we have bad actors there
that are
contributing to the detriment of entire neighborhoods at a time,
and unfortunately in the Central Business District, where it's a
mixed-use set of neighborhoods, where literally residents live right above
businesses.
It's an issue when
there's a cozy relationship with problem actors in that
industry. And so I'd like to button that up, mostly to protect officers
from any kind of allegation of impropriety or a conflict of
interest. But when active duty cops roll up on an establishment and off-duty
cops are there working security,
that leaves the department open to the optics issue of
impropriety. I'm not suggesting anything wrong is going on here.
Likewise, I think it's also important to examine the relationship
that off-duty officers have hanging out at late-hour liquor
establishments.
Again, I think it's great that the industry wants to support our
officers. They work very hard. It's natural to want to give someone a sandwich or
a cup of coffee.
But there's a difference between a sandwich and a cup of coffee on shift
versus free bottle service on the weekends.
So again, I want to flag that for you as a concern.
And then
finally, how are the helicopters going?
Well, here, a couple of things and I'll get right back to you on the
helicopter. I just want to be clear about the question that
you asked.
Because initially, the question that you asked about officers working,
is there a policy against them working in liquor
establishments off duty.
Late hours, specifically.
Right. So
initially, I was wondering if you were asking that question to see if those
officers could do that. I didn't realize at that point that you felt that
that was an issue that was going on.
It's an issue.
So this is something that we can talk about.
Very good.
So,
I'll follow up with you on that one.
Thank you.
As it relates to the helicopters, and this is
important to your very first question about vehicle pursuits.
Our answer to what's going on with vehicle pursuits is air support,
which is why we ordered the Bell 429, and now we
have two 407s that should be here in
December.
We procured those new helicopters because the other helicopters we had
were pretty old, and they were usually down.
Having those helicopters up gives us air support so that they
can call out
where these vehicles are going, so that our officers don't have to engage
in a direct pursuit. So as long as they can keep eyes
on this vehicle that's fleeing, we can reach out not
only to our CPD officers, but if they hit the expressway, the state
police, the county, or any surrounding suburbs.
And it's been extremely helpful with us in bringing down robberies.
Well, and Superintendent, amen. We agree 100%.
I'm not sure you're familiar, but there's a couple of us who've been here,
myself almost 18 years, every year we've been begging for more helicopters for you
all. So I'm glad that finally we've made some progress there, and I agree with all
the points you just made.
My concern is staffing.
And those helicopters are an incredible resource.
But like most of your department's issues, overnight
it's critical. I see them out there.
But as you get the additional equipment added, please,
really beefing up the overnight work is critical.
And for that reason,
we've added two additional pilots-
That's fantastic news
... to the budget.
Well, again, I'm a big fan of that program.
When you look at how we stack up against other big cities, even with the new
additions, our helicopter fleet is teensy.
And to your point, it's a hell of a force multiplier, and it does
reduce the need to engage in high-speed pursuits.
So I'm glad that that's working out well.
Superintendent, I just want to tell you I'm a big fan of the work that you're
doing. We don't interact on a very regular basis, but
I'm very happy with the work that you and your team are doing to turn the
department around in difficult times, and certainly at a time when resources
are stretched very thin.
So thank you, and I will follow up on those items with you after budget hearings.
Good. Thank you. I appreciate it all.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
No problem. Thank you, Alderman Riley.
We're going to go to Alderwoman Scott, followed by Alderman Lawson.
Good afternoon.
I know it's been a long day. But I wanted to say thank you all for all
being here, and thank you for your continued service for the City of Chicago.
Many of our residents really don't know
the extent of how hard you work. They look at a police officer and just
say, "Oh, he just drives by."
And that's not always the case. I feel like being in this
automatic role, I've played a little policing myself, being in
a ward with residents,
because they call us first before calling 911, as if we
have the support in the back of our office to help.
But on behalf of myself and the 24th Ward, I want
to send a deep condolence to the family of
Enrique Martinez,
to his work family, to his family, to his friends.
I had the unfortunate
pleasure to hear the sound of that video,
and it kind of rocked my world.
I know we've had many officer shootings, but this one kind of took
me
over a little bit because I heard the sound where he
initiated seven times to
stop reaching. So he ultimately put his life first before
he
ultimately shot the offender, right?
And I say that because I know we have another case through
COPA where it was in my ward where the
offender turned to the officer and the officer shot, and so his job is
in jeopardy. And I had a conversation with the
cops in my ward,
my Sergeant
Ruiz, and some of the other DCOs, like, "I need you all to
come home because I need you all in the ward, and I need you all to come home."
They was like, "I don't know how I would've handled that either,"
because of all of the stipulations.
And so I agree with Alderman
Riley
that
we need the administration to allow you all to do your job.
And I know that we've had instances where we've had different police
shootings, and I think that's where some of the
disconnect comes. But we need you all to do your job effectively so that
we can have a safer,
stronger Chicago.
The work that is being done, I thank you all.
I support the work that you're doing. I see it.
I live it firsthand, when you live in a
violently impacted ward,
between
the 11th District and the 10th District, the highest districts in the city of
Chicago. I see it. I feel it.
My residents tell me. And so when you are
short-staffed,
I feel it. I see it. And it's not
enjoyable to tell my residents that
it's nothing that we can do at the moment.
Because
your job is to protect and serve. And so when we are short,
we can't always protect and serve.
And so again, I
support you guys.
Everybody took over my questions I asked.
I didn't want to
ask questions that I knew that was asked, so I asked a couple of folks what was
already asked. So they took all my questions.
But the real question, and this is not for a question for you to answer now,
but how do we as a 50
automatic
council help you? That's the real question. How do we help you?
Because much of how we can support you, you all can do your job a
lot more effectively. So again, thank you guys.
Thank you for your service. This is not an
answer that I look for today, but I would like to know how can we help
you.
Well, ma'am, just by what you're doing right now, bringing attention
to certain things.
One of the things that you talked about were police-involved shootings.
And
oftentimes, and this is what people really don't understand,
officers are faced with making split-second decisions.
And in a
fraction of a second, a situation can turn deadly, and that
officer has that small window to make a decision.
And
that decision that the officer makes should be based on the totality of the
circumstances, all of the information that the officer has at the
time that he or she are making that decision,
and not to be judged in hindsight by those who can
review a video and were not facing that
situation at that time, dealing with the levels of stress,
and then under those levels of stress, having to make those split-second
decisions.
The education around that is extremely important,
because that fraction of a second where an officer hesitates
could cost that officer his or her life.
It could cost a citizen
their lives.
And this is the challenging position that officers are
placed in when they're faced with deadly force.
And no one wants to ever find themselves in that situation.
But unfortunately, some officers have.
And
when we're making those split-second decisions,
we have to determine if that decision that the officer made was reasonable
under the circumstances that the officer knew at the time.
And the education of everyone here is extremely important,
and the open mind and the dialogue, those types of questions are very
important. So any time there's a question about
something
We should have an open dialogue. We should come to these meetings with an open mind
so that we can educate each other and have each other understand,
as opposed to being closed off or pointing fingers and
just
making accusations or allegations without the facts.
So I think if we can put those things on the table and start to talk about these
things and bring it to everyone's attention, we'll be in a better place,
Alderwoman.
Thank you.
Good. I was just going to echo something that I know Alderman Sposato has said
many times. I took the training at the academy, and
we got a super mini slice of
the literal 150 questions that an officer has to answer
in the process of being in a situation.
So I've got
a better appreciation for
what it takes to even have the presence of mind to be able to react
in these situations in a way
that keeps themselves safe. And to your point earlier, your
prime directive is to protect the sanctity of life.
So I would encourage all of my colleagues, if you haven't done it before, I think
it's a very worthwhile training.
And I think we can't
undervalue
or speak overly about the importance of
training for our police officers, because I think the more training that we have,
the better.
Because that goes to help build up those muscles, right?
To give you the experience and the training to know how to respond in these
situations. Next we have Alderman Lawson.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Hello, Superintendent.
How are you, Alderman?
Hanging in there. It's been a long day.
I appreciate it. You know you're toward the end when you get to me, though.
I think.
At least of the first round.
So first and foremost, on behalf of everyone in the 44th Ward, we send our
condolences to Officer Martinez, his family, his police family.
It's a tragic death of a promising young man that really you hate to
see. So we're with you always. I appreciate all the work the department does.
I'm one of the few that has just one district.
The 19th District that we work very closely with.
And part of that is because we have so many large events that outside of
downtown, I probably have some of the most of anyone in the city.
Whether that's at Wrigley or Pride, Market Days, the marathon.
We got football at Wrigley tomorrow, actually.
But just to speak on some of the events that some folks have been talking about.
Obviously, you know we spend a lot of time with your department and Area
Three and working on the Pride Parade, and right-sizing that
event so that we could better
utilize the officers' time that we had.
And I know Pride is
different from a lot of others, but
wanted to
see how we can do that to other events and better coordinate.
Because I think there was a feeling that Pride was being targeted, and we had to do
a lot of explaining that actually, this is what is expected of parades in the city,
whether that's Pride or Bud Billiken or South Side Irish.
But I think it's probably an exercise that we should be doing citywide with large
events so that we understand what that impact is.
Because I know when they get their permit, they'll say there's a couple thousand
people that are going to be there, but there's no control when 10,000,
15,000 show up until you guys have to come, right?
And so
I'm not sure if there's a question or maybe your thoughts on how we could work
together with your local leaders to right-size some of these events and
cut you guys a break.
No, absolutely. And here, I want to make something clear about
the Pride event this year.
We analyze and assess
the effects of each parade or each gathering,
no matter what that event is. And what we do is we create
plans around it. Now, the year prior
to this year, there was a major failure at
Pride.
Right.
And the reason that there was a major failure, we had officers out there until
4:00, 5:00 in the morning. They were out there on foot for 18 hours
working to try to break down a crowd.
Now, that had nothing to do with the Pride Parade.
Right.
And so we were not targeting the Pride
Parade. What we were looking at was keeping down
the violence and the vandalism that occurred by people who
decided to go over into the
neighborhood after the Pride Parade, which has turned into some type of
ritual.
And we wanted to put an end to that before it started.
You had thousands of people who would get off the train, and they would just run
through the neighborhoods, fight, commit acts of vandalism.
People
having their cars damaged. So we
were coming up with a plan, and this was the first year that we did it, to
deal with that. We ended up, I believe, nearly
40 arrests that night.
But we put an end to it
around midnight.
Right.
So it didn't cost us as much in overtime.
We didn't have officers hurt and injured like we had the year before.
And we weren't out there all night with the residents wondering what we're going to
do as a police department. So I just want to make sure that it was clear that
we're never going to target an event in that manner.
We just wanted to make sure that after that parade was over,
that we did everything we could to keep the residents safe.
Right.
But we do analyze every single situation,
from Pride to Bud Billiken to South Side
Irish-
Right
... the Irish parade downtown.
Right.
We're working through all of those.
So where we see problems, we put measures in place to make sure that we
keep it as safe as possible.
Right. And you and I, of course, we're on the same page.
Yes.
We spoke right before, during, after.
Yeah.
Immediately after that event. And explaining to the community, I think, was maybe a
challenge on the front end. People have understood it now.
We appreciate how the parade was handled. My residents do.
The term mass arrest helped us out
As I told you, we didn't have the same sort of repeat, the Monday night crowd.
Right.
We had a plan. They were ready on Belmont.
But getting that word out en masse arrest,
that you're not going to be able to just come and act like a fool and cause trouble
or
without consequences is huge. And that's a change that I think that you brought,
and that I and my neighbors and a lot of my colleagues appreciate
very much. And we'll always continue to be a partner on all of those things that
happen up north.
Alderman Riley mentioned this, and we've had several in my ward as well,
but we have a real spike in commercial burglaries, or at least that we're seeing.
Whether they're going in when they're open or not,
they're stealing liquor, just walking out the door.
They're pulling ATMs out with their trucks, high-end fragrance, some of
those things. How are we looking at that as a pattern or how are we
addressing those specifically commercial targets?
And we have plans around that. I'll turn that over to the Chief of Patrol, John
High.
Okay. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Alderman, and thank you for that question.
Recently, there has been an uptick in those incidents as we're fully aware of.
Without giving away too much of our strategies, our TAC
team's hours have been adjusted. The Chief of Detectives, Chief
of Bureau of Counterterrorism, all of our organizations are working
together, bringing multiple facets to that area.
Recently, I know that one of the vehicles used in that crew was apprehended on
Lakeshore Drive that was leaving the scene over there.
I believe three of the four subjects were placed under arrest, three juveniles.
But right now, obviously, we're bringing in additional resources.
Hours have been adjusted to tactical teams from various parts of the cities, along
with the Deputy Chief Calderon and the commanders of the 19th District are doing an
incredible job, and the Captain Terry Forbes, by placing
officers, deploying with the data-driven analysis where we're going to put those
officers in that area, along with the addition with our
PH1 or our helicopter support, that when these subjects are
observed or called out in our SDSC rooms, we're able to track those, call out the
helicopter, and apprehend these individuals committing these crimes.
Great. Thank you. And happy to chat further not on the record as
well. And let me say, whatever we can do. I've got strong chambers.
I've got strong business communities. We put the word out.
They're investing to protect themselves as best they can.
But unfortunately, it's not until they've been hit until once or twice before
they're going to spend $10,000, $20,000 on the roll down or
private security. So let's continue to work on that as best we can.
I think
maybe I have time for one more. There was some cuts to
counterterrorism,
and I don't believe that's been addressed.
I haven't been here all day, but for most of it.
Again, we've got Wrigley Field, I've got Pride, and we've spent a lot of
counterterrorism resources on both areas.
Could you talk about where we're going with that or how that's being shifted?
Is-
I'll turn it over to-
You updated as well?
... to the Chief of the Bureau of Counterterrorism, Duane DeVries.
All right. Thank you.
Good afternoon. Chief Duane DeVries from Bureau of Counterterrorism.
Thank you for the question.
Currently in BCT, we have 24 units under us.
So obviously,
the ones in 19, you see a lot of the K9, the SWAT, JTTF, et
cetera, at your different venues.
None of those positions have been taken.
What we have lost is a few of the mounted unit positions, which we don't have those
positions filled at this time.
We only have a certain amount of horses.
Back in the day, the horses were used a lot differently and a lot
more for
patrol work, crowd control work, et cetera.
Now they're more ceremonial and more for high visibility, especially
like you were saying, we'll have them go around the 19th District after some
robbery sprees and stuff like that because it brings a good sense of
security when you see the horses.
So we'll be able to function fine without those positions.
Same with K9. They're positions that we were not filling to begin with, so we
lost a couple on that line.
Where we've gained is, like the superintendent mentioned, two more pilots.
So where our losses are, are areas where we've been decreased
several years ago already that just have never gotten up to that level again.
And where our gains are, where we're starting to use more resources in those
avenues that we need them. So it's not going to affect us.
We're still going to be able to do what we got to do.
Obviously, we'd like to have a lot more people in our bureau to do a lot of the
work that we do, but that's across the board.
Sensible, though, nonetheless. That's all I have.
Again, thank you all for everything you do every day. And I don't need a round two.
Okay. Thank you, Alderman Lawson.
Sure.
Next, we're going to go to Chair Vasquez.
Great. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you, superintendent, and everyone here being at the box.
Alderman.
What you all do is clearly some of the most dangerous work in city
government.
I thank you for all the work that we've seen in the 40th Ward, in 17th, 19th, 20th,
and 24th districts. We've had a number of great commanders that we've been able to
partner up with.
And really thank you for
kind of the credibility and legitimacy you've brought to the department.
I think a lot of us
had a lot of concerns with your predecessor.
And I guess
this week, you're the other 50 to zero vote when it came
to your appointment. I think we have general support here as a council.
So I've got a couple questions. I will most likely need a round two.
I'll start with things through the chair if possible.
So we had conversations related to the OIG,
CCPSA, and COPA, whose budget floors are set
based on the CPD budget.
Now, the CPD budget,
we haven't been able to find out what the fringe cost is.
So when they're calculating their 1% or whatever percentage of the CPD, it
doesn't include the fringe cost, which if it did, would actually give them a
higher floor to be able to work with.
And so CCPSA specifically, we've seen challenges as far
as stipends for the district counselors.
Anthony Driver, when he testified here, explained how hard it is to be able to do
two jobs in effect. And so I guess
the first question is, what is CPD's fringe cost,
and what exact line item is it in the budget?
Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So we do not have the exact fringe costs.
You'll find that in the finance general section of the budget recommendations book,
and the Office of Budget and Management would be able to give you a more accurate
figure as to what that is.
Yeah. So they were here day one and weren't able to.
It's like this opaque, large kind of
finance general that they weren't able to provide detail.
Are you able to extrapolate detail based on head count, knowing that there's
benefits associated with staffing?
I don't have an exact dollar figure.
I can tell you that the estimate is 50%, 60% of the salary cost is
typically fringe. But as far as really getting in under the hood, I
don't see those machinations at all.
Okay.
And you would have to go to-
Yeah
... either Department of Finance or Office of Budget and Management.
Thank you for that. I think as we think about the management ordinance and things
that we want to get from the comptroller, from a budget, I think it's one of those
things that we just want more clarity on. So, thank you.
Trevor Vasquez, do you remember, did we ask that through the chair while the budget
director and CFO were up here?
I'm pretty sure we did. If not, we can definitely...
Thank you.
Yes. Yes, we did. Thank you, Audrey Lopez.
Next,
we know that when we think about the CPD budget, a lot of it's head count and
overtime, but there's other
items that are
CPD budget that aren't in CPD. For example, the Office of Public Safety
Administration
has its costs, right? Technology, everything else.
Two FMs got vehicles, finance general has other things.
I know finance general, again, is a little bit squishy to kind of lock in.
But through the chair, would you all be able to send a list of the things that are
CPD related costs that aren't under the CPD,
as a department?
So, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
We can give you a list of what those items actually are, but as far as the
actual dollar figure that's being budgeted for those, we don't have visibility into
that.
Okay. Yeah. Even if it's like the line items, right?
I think we've been trying to get the data as we get from the budget office, that
even being able to know like for like what to look at, that'd be super helpful.
Yeah, it would be more so like Ford Explorers, two FM.
Yeah.
Software, OPSA, those sort of things.
Yeah. Just a general list to start working from, I think would be great for us to
kind of like dig into, so thank you for that.
Next,
we've got CAPS meetings, and I was actually
civilian facilitator for CAPS in the 24th district prior to being elected.
Something I didn't get a handle of then and still don't have a handle of is like
what are the metrics for success when it comes to CAPS meetings?
So do you have any documentation on how you measure success, right?
Is it how many people show up? Is it how many meetings? That kind of stuff.
How is that determined?
We'll turn that over to Director Brooks.
Director Glenn Brooks, Office of Community Policing.
So a raw measurement of success, we look at the total
number of meetings, the number of attendees, and et cetera.
As we go forward, what we are looking at is the number of
attendees not only coming once, but twice and three times, and how we build
that relationship. Another point of that metric is how are we following up
with those concerns that are being addressed or being brought up at
CAPS meetings, and making sure we follow through them.
So those, as we get advanced information systems that
we'll be able to track and follow up besides paper
and pencil, those are the type of metrics that we're looking at following up on.
Yeah, that'd be great. I
learned a lot from being a facilitator in regards to how to measure it
both quantitatively and qualitatively.
In fact-
Right
... sometimes neighbors come in with their own bias, and it actually was like a
sergeant correcting them and saying, "Hey, some of these things that you believe
are CPD responsibilities are actually other things that are valuable."
So I guess through the chair, if you'd be able to send the quantitative stuff,
right? How many meetings in 2024 through each beat, the attendance
numbers, just to be able to track that, that'd be helpful.
And then
kind of similar corollary to it, we've now got the CCPSA
district counselors, right? And so it's been kind of a gray area in figuring
out like how often they meet with commanders, what those meetings look like.
They hold their own meetings, and commanders show up.
But something that occurred this past year is we'll have a meeting with Area Three,
for example, where we get a lot of really good information, and it's very nuanced
in a way that I think is helpful.
We got some feedback from district counselors as to wanting similar meetings with
commanders in a way that's not necessarily a public one, but getting a better
understanding of context. And so just wanted to similarly get a sense
of how many meetings are occurring between the district counselors and their
commanders.
So, are you aware of the Open Meetings Act-
Yes
... as it relates to that? And I think that's some of the issues
that have occurred, and I know we're supposed to
be setting something up pretty soon. Glenn, do you have any information on that?
So I don't have a deep insight into it, but
we are working on meeting that. One of our, as the superintendent mentioned,
the Open Meetings Act is a
huge-
Sure
... challenge for us as we start to meet in larger groups than
one. And then,
so we're first trying to work through that-
Yeah
... in a way that we can meet with them more often.
But again, all of the
elected counselors are invited to any of the CAPS meetings, which they
can attend, participate, and share the knowledge that they have so
that we can work in a collaborative manner.
Sure. So for clarity, and I'm glad this is being brought up.
Being part of the group that wrote the legislation, I'm pretty clear on the Open
Meetings Act. So let's say you've got three in one district.
No two of those can be in the same space unless it's public.
However, if you're doing an area meeting, you could have one from each district,
and they could be in a meeting as long as it's not two from each district.
So I'd love to partner up to kind of figure out some structure there, because
I'm in agreement with you as far as getting the state to amend some things to make
it easier.
Because the issue there is Which district council
members do you allow to be there?
Yeah.
And that's when the back and forth starts.
Right. And I think part of it is there's different roles within the district
councilor. So we could go back to CCPSA to kind of clarify some of that in the
meantime. And I want to make sure that we're helpful in that, because I think in
the absence of a structure, you start getting different perspectives from
different district councilors, and it's like, let's clarify all that so it's not
about feelings, and it's just like, here's what it'll look like.
So just wanted to flag that. So thank you so much.
The next question I have is
overtime, overtime, overtime. So I think we all bring it up.
I know there was conversation about how there's been work done to kind of
manage some of that. Have there been any internal studies on overtime and
what could be done? And if so, can you share that through the chair?
The studies?
What we can do is just go over a few things with you right now and see what it is
that exactly you would want.
Yeah. Thank you for that.
And the progress that we've made so far on overtime.
Sure.
Hi. Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So one of the things that we've done is we've made a few tweaks to our overtime.
So we used to, when the officers filled it out, there was a other
category. We've since eliminated that, and we were making them define
exactly what they were doing. In addition to that, we've created a new
dashboard for the
unit commanders, so they can go in and see exactly what's being
expended, what's happening on with that, how they're doing with regards to
budget. So the results that we're seeing from 2023,
January 1 to October 31st, we expended
$252 million. This year in the same time period, we
expended $211 million. So you're looking at almost $41
million in savings there. When you incorporate the DNC overtime, which
was about $26 million, and then when you adjust our 2024
expenditures to what they would have been in 2023 contract dollars, you're
looking at almost $82 million in savings through that increased
management. I think there's room to go.
I think we need to continue to evaluate how we're using overtime.
But at the end of the day, we are seeing fewer officers, and the demand for
police services still remain the same.
I think we talked a little bit about special events, and I just want to correct
myself. When we talked about reimbursable and what we've gotten back, I
said a little bit below $2 million.
It was actually $1.5 million from Lollapalooza.
Jesus. Thank you for the correction.
I'll go to that next.
And I just want to just mention something, and I can
have Chief Highin talk about a few things, because along with the
overtime, we've been able to make these reductions with
what we feel right now is a record number of pop-up events
that did not occur the year prior. So Joe, you want to talk a little
bit about that?
Thank you, Superintendent. Good afternoon, Alderman.
Just kind of an interesting thing about our overtime budget and things that pop up,
like demonstrations. I think we've had close to over 130
plus demonstrations every weekend in the year of 2024,
starting in 2023.
For those demonstrations, the tactical teams are brought down from various parts
of the city, which at time, our number one asset obviously is the men and women of
the Chicago Police Department, where we have to backfill in the districts,
hiring what Superintendent referred to as a buyback.
But the overtime with those 130 plus demonstrations
coming out of each district's overtime budget, because there's not really an event
number associated with the demonstrations that occur downtown and throughout the
city. Our teen trends are also-- I know the
alderperson before was talking about trending down, and thank God we
are trending down in the teen trends.
But again, it's the same kind of situation where resources are brought from
various parts of the city to cover that, and we have to backfill the B cars to
assure the officers' safety for our officers.
So based on the question, if I could get through the chair, those different
categories and numbers on that as best as possible.
I think to your point, which I completely appreciate, there's controllable events
and uncontrollable, unanticipated events that I think we all recognize need
to be addressed. The controllables are something I'd like to follow up in the
second round, if I could, Chairwoman.
Sure.
Thank you.
You got it. We are going to take a quick 10-minute break, and then we're going to
reconvene here. So we're going to stand at ease
for
10 minutes. No problem.
Okay.
We're going to get started again.
Next, we have
Chair Martin. Sorry.
You're good.
Thank you, Chair. Superintendent,
good afternoon.
How are you? Alderman.
Thanks for bearing with us as we get into, hopefully, the twilight of this
hearing.
My thanks to you and your team for being here, and more importantly, for all the
work that you do day in and day out. Like my colleagues, I do
want to underscore my condolences with regard
to Officer Martinez's murder to you, to all of the leaders,
to everybody at CPD on behalf of myself and the 47th
Ward.
Also wanted to note, as a number of people have mentioned, and as you mentioned
yourself, the work that you and your team have done with
regard to reducing robberies and carjackings
in and around my community
is very much appreciated, has not gone unnoticed, and the ongoing work
regarding commercial burglaries per your back and forth with Alderman Lawson,
also much appreciated. Thank you.
I want to follow up on a few consent decree
related pieces, something that I worked on before I got into this
job, something that I follow very closely.
And as you and many others have noted, I think this is about
improving the ability of the police department to do the work
that you and all our other public safety institutions
need to do to help keep our community safe.
And part of that's about personnel and processes, and part of it's about, as you
noted, strengthening the trust across all of our communities.
And I think that it's that second point that doesn't get as much
emphasis but is really critical because, as you noted,
to see those homicide clearance figures or just clearance figures
overall go up, up, up year over year, a lot of that speaks to
the trust that day in and day out you and others are working
to expand across the city.
I appreciate the work that you and your team have
done around the budget. I don't think, candidly,
that the proposed budget gives you the tools that you and
the department more generally need to quickly and efficiently
comply with the consent decree. I
was heartened to learn earlier today that those nine positions are coming back in
with regard to clinical work. But those cuts shouldn't have happened to begin with,
because when we're talking about not just what officers need, but also how that
works within the broader context of the consent decree, we know with the
independent monitoring report, the most recent one, that it
notes that
with regard to obstacles to advancing towards further compliance,
they specifically note challenges to fill vacant positions
required to service the department.
So I just look at that and I say
because they specifically note the vacancy piece, cutting those nine
vacancies shouldn't have been on the table to begin with.
Because over the last several years, as Block Club reported yesterday or
earlier today,
the department is making progress year after year after year in filling those
positions. Are there still vacancies at the end of the day? Sure.
But there's been slow and steady progress year after year.
So looking closely at that monitoring report, I don't think that there should
have been a proposal to you and your team to
consider
those vacancies.
I also look at data collection, analysis, and management.
That's one where the department at the moment, despite the ongoing
work that Chief Novalis had mentioned, in full compliance
with just three of the 42 paragraphs.
We've seen good progress though. It went from zero in the last
monitoring report to three. So we're getting where we need to go, but
again, obstacles to advancing towards further compliance per the monitoring
report note inadequate or non-existent data collection to
analyze and evaluate officer mental health and wellness.
And so I really am concerned that the mayor has proposed
cutting a project strategy manager position, three
project coordinator positions, 18 performance
analyst positions. So
I understand that the budget that we're currently looking
at hopefully will give you all the ability to maintain what is happening.
But we don't want to just maintain, and I understand
through your remarks that you feel the same.
We want to ramp up the pace at which compliance is
happening. So
let me know if I'm missing this, but I don't feel that the
cuts with regard to
the performance analysts in particular, that's not going to help CPD
ramp up compliance with consent decree metrics.
What do you think about that?
So here
, your concern is valid. Absolutely,
100%. Obviously, we had
the same concerns.
What I can tell you is, and I know you said that those positions should not
have been placed on the table, I agree.
However,
sitting around the table with all the stakeholders, sometimes there has to be an
education.
Sometimes we have to talk these things out and explain why those things
are extremely important.
We understand that everybody here has a job to do,
and in their job, they're trying to finalize
things on their end, and we're doing the same.
Which is why I believe everybody is fighting for something that's
going to help them get their jobs done.
What I can tell you is this, and when I talk to you about
the consent decree and the progress,
and I can probably have Ryan Fitzsimons talk a little more about this.
Some of those positions that we looked at
was going to be somewhere down the road when we were able to hire
those people. In the meantime, we have a lot of people that
we've hired, civilians, and people that are still in the
process of being hired right now.
So
again, there was a prioritization
around those positions
that are going to help us move the consent decree forward.
That was what we prioritized. That was of the utmost important.
Those
positions that were the most
serious to us at this time. Don't get me wrong,
every position that we negotiated last year
to help build out the consent decree, because look, part of it too is that
I want to make sure that we're utilizing our manpower in the best
possible way. We've got a workforce allocation study coming up, and
what I wanted to make sure that we had was a
civilian staff
that could cover admin positions that we have officers
in right now and eliminate that need.
And if we had the civilian staff to do that,
now we can put more officers on the street.
We have less of those admin positions that we need to fill with police
officers. So to your point,
yes,
if I could keep every single position, I would. Absolutely.
But I do know, and we do understand that
this budget is serious right now and everyone's
taking cuts, but what we would not
do is just sit by and not speak up about what was important to
us, especially when it comes to the consent decree and moving those
efforts forward. So right now, I can promise you right now
that CPD is serious about moving this consent decree forward,
and we're not going to stop our forward movement to reach
compliance
with what we're doing right now because of budget cuts.
We will continue to work toward moving this forward.
And look, as things unfold in the future,
hopefully we get to add more things that are going to be necessary
when we get into those later stages of compliance.
But I'm feeling really good about the direction that we're going and my team,
because I want everybody to understand this, especially with my consent
decree team. We are working in good faith.
Regardless to what the reports are out there, they are working their
fingers to the bone, and we've got all of the information to prove it.
We're taking this seriously. But we want to make sure that we
come up with the best possible consent decree at the end of the day,
or the effects of it, and the way that it affects our department.
I appreciate that completely, and I think with the remaining time, I have one quick
question and a longer question, because we want you to have all the tools that
you need, not just to do okay, not just to continue where you're
doing right now, but even take off.
And so one question, if you don't have it immediately through the chair,
of the 456 vacant positions that were
cut from your budget, how many of them were tied directly to
fulfilling requirements in the consent decree?
Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
The figure we have is 162.
Okay. If you can provide through the chair just a breakdown, an itemized
breakdown of those, where they fall.
I can give those right now if you want.
15 BIA-
Can I ask through the chair, because I just got one more minute and one more
question, but thank you. The last is around training, because
Superintendent, I thought you brought up a good piece about when we're using
civilians to do civilian positions, that enables sworn officers
to really do the work that is best suited for sworn officers.
And I look specifically at the training piece.
I know that that's something, and we're looking forward to the monitoring report
that's coming out next week to see the improvement there.
The most recent one talks about us needing to
ensure that the training academy receives human technical
resources required to effectively schedule and execute the
academy. But I see 71 proposed cuts,
and to me, that's a concern because those could be positions that are filled by
civilians throughout next year, and allowing
sworn officers to go out, be walking the beat, working with other
officers. So if you can respond more to
how it would be helpful to bring at least some of those
training officer positions back into the budget.
Well, it's also helpful
that we bring back people, because the question was asked earlier
about retired officers, people with a
level of expertise and training that we were able to bring back.
Finding that type of talent is important also because we have people
with the experience to provide the training and not just
civilians who don't have that police
response lived experience.
It is extremely important.
I come from a training background, and so I know how important training
is to our department. And it gets us to the
operational
compliance in our consent decree because that's where it
all ends up. We develop policy, we test it out,
and then at some point, once everything is approved now, we start to train
on those policies.
And to make sure that we have the right number of
people in place
to provide that training is going to be of the utmost importance because
once we reach that preliminary secondary compliance Everything
is training. We have to make sure that we get people trained.
So it is important to make sure that we are
fully staffed when it comes to our training division, and we have the best and
most well-trained people to provide training for others.
Thank you, Superintendent. Thank you, Chair.
You need a round two? You're good? Okay.
We're going to go with Alderman Lenny Manal Hoppenworth. Do you have questions?
Great. You're next.
Thank you, Chair.
Hi, Superintendent.
How are you?
I'm well. Thank you for being here. Thank you to your team.
I would also like to express my sincere condolences for the loss of
Enrique Martinez, and that's on behalf of the 48th Ward.
I
wanted to let you know that I really
appreciate the two new commanders in
the 24th and the 20th districts.
We're the only ward, I think, that's served by two women
police commanders, and I'm very proud to work with
them.
I'm also very thankful to the CAPS team.
I was just at the beat meeting yesterday on Kenmore,
and
I think we just need to continue to work together as we
all want the same things. So,
I also wanted to commend you, of course, for your work,
especially around the DNC.
My first question has to do with the
vacancies, the thousand position vacancies that you have.
With the funds that you do have, what are you doing
to recruit and retain officers?
We talked a lot today about your challenges, but there is
a call to service, right?
And I saw that
at OEMC, speaking to the dispatchers
on the
police side and on the fire side. So can you speak a little bit on that?
How are we
attracting new recruits? I also was at the
training academy with others.
Alderman Waguespack was my partner,
and we tried to work really well together, but
it's difficult.
And so I understand what it takes a little bit.
I understand a little bit about what it takes.
But can you speak on that? How are we
showing that Chicago is a place that we
care for our workers?
Well, listen, I'll first talk about
the importance of a professional police department.
Bless you. And
when we look at the work that our officers
provided for the city during the DNC,
you saw professionalism, you saw dedication, resilience,
courage.
Anything that you could think of that would describe greatness, that's what you saw
from these officers.
As we continue to move forward with our training, preparation,
making sure that our officers are well,
it becomes word of mouth at some point, where these
officers are now reaching out to others to talk about how much they appreciate the
work that they're doing. That's how it was when I started this job.
There was a level of pride there. And I believe that these officers are getting to
a point now where pride is coming to the forefront
of working this job.
Having a clear understanding of what it is to be called to
this particular profession. Not just a job, but that you're
serving something greater than self,
that you're providing a service for others
in lieu of your own safety.
So that's one of the things. I want to make sure that we
start to showcase who our officers are, what our department is
doing.
We often
times hear, "Well, what department did you reach out to to
find out about these things, and who did you talk..." Listen, we're the Chicago
Police Department. We're the second largest metropolitan police department in this
entire country.
We want a department where people are reaching out to us and
asking us
for advice. What are we doing?
And so that we can reach back and help others.
We have great minds within this department, and
from right here, they can professionalize, and that's how we're going to push this
forward. As far as our efforts around
recruitment, I'll turn that over to Chief Talley from
the Bureau of Internal Affairs.
Good afternoon. Chief Yolanda Talley of the Bureau of Internal Affairs.
Our Recruitment and Retention unit is sitting right now in the Bureau of
Internal Affairs. I think what
a lot of people don't know is that the Chicago Police Department has a
committed
unit to recruitment. That's all our officers do is
recruit 24/7.
We have developed a strategic plan that we can make available through the Chair
to let you know what we're doing and how we're doing it.
The consent decree required that we have a recruitment unit, and we
do.
It's staffed by two sergeants and approximately 16 officers.
We travel nationally. All of our local colleges and
universities, our military bases, our
HBCUs, our grocery stores, our
sports facilities, we're everywhere.
We have great partnership with many of the aldermen, and the council have
been very supportive of what we're doing, what the Chicago Police Department is
doing with recruitment and retention of our officers.
Thank you. So to clarify, this is internal, and you don't use any outside vendors?
We use them for consulting and marketing only.
Okay. Thank you for that.
Yeah, my commanders
prepped us for the DNC, brought us together,
and I think that is the kind of spirit that we want to
continue to grow with all of the wards that
overlap in our districts. So,
I wanted to ask
about
what BGA mentioned.
As with other departments, CPD's budget
includes a reserve balance appropriation from a number of
grant funds, and this appropriation, which appears in
several departments' budgets, has been retroactively
added to 2024 appropriations data as well,
and wasn't used in the previous year's budget at the time of the
passage.
Can you speak a little bit about this?
And can you clarify the purpose of this
appropriation?
Talk a little bit about that or clarify that.
Yeah. Hi, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
Are you talking about the grant funds that we have?
So essentially, every time we apply for a grant, we
need to incorporate it in here and plan for it.
There are some grants, like the DNC, where we were planning on getting
$50 million, but through the advocacy of the superintendent, our
partners in Milwaukee, we were able to get it up to $75 million.
And then there was a $25 million addition,
and then that kind of created that change.
So, that's just a mechanical way of making sure that what is
in the budget documents reflect the reality as it plays out
between
the last budget and the year.
Okay. Thank you for that.
My next question has to do with the
$82.5 million appropriation for
legal judgments and settlements.
And that was raised $35 million in
2020, I believe, per the budget book, page
306.
Hi, yes. Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So, one thing I will say about that one is if you read it on page
306, it says, "As approved by the Corporation Council." So
that $82.5 million, we don't really have control over.
That's going to go to DOL, and they would be a better one to direct that question
to.
Okay.
I understand that
comes out of Finance General, right?
No.
That one is going to be in our budget.
That $82.5 million is within our budget, but we do not control it.
It's a way of just putting the cost onto the police department, and
then the Department of Law is the one who actually oversees paying
out those amounts as settlements and judgments come in.
Okay. Yeah. I guess the
main reason why I'm bringing it up is because the
settlement briefings are
the worst part of coming down to this building.
It is the worst.
Scott, would you like to talk about it?
I'm sorry,
General Counsel Scott Spears. Would you like to talk a little bit about how
we're trending when it comes to this?
Yeah, and I understand. These cases are
a decade old. Maybe they're decades old.
And every time I have to hear a story,
I'm not even a family member of those that were affected.
It's visceral, and I don't like doing it.
I know we have to do it.
And I appreciate
what we're talking about today, a lot of training.
It's great.
It's just hard to piece those pieces together.
What are we doing so that we are not back in the same place that we are
in today, where we are going to have to pay
out on so many settlements?
You want to talk a little bit about that, Scott, and then I'll close it.
Spears, General Counsel to the Superintendent.
This is a very serious issue, and what I can say, and what I
think the law department will expand on more during their budget hearing, is that
we have seen a consistent decline over the past five years
in the number of new lawsuits being filed.
The good work of the consent decree, policy development,
training of the officers are all huge impacts going forward.
And as you mentioned, some of these cases are very old fact patterns,
some 10, 20 years old, that we're now dealing with
today. And it's this good work that we're doing now that will
hopefully stop this in the future.
What we're doing now to manage the threat of lawsuits, we have a full-time risk
manager within the Chicago Police Department who works with legal
affairs to track new lawsuits and spot trends.
We meet weekly with the Department of Law leadership in torts and federal civil
rights litigation to review trends and get ahead of issues.
Like I said, from 2020 through the present, there's been a substantial decrease in
the number of new lawsuits, and DOL will provide further specifics
on that.
And we'll continue to work with the Department of Law
and the Chicago Police Department's Research and Development and Training and
Support group to address issues as they arise and try to continue the current
trend of fewer lawsuits
And to that point,
let's look at something as large scale as the DNC,
where we had a total of maybe five to six days
of mass protests across the city.
And I believe it was a total of 23 complaints.
Is that-
20 complaints. Three of them were duplicates, but 20 complaints from the
DNC.
So 20 complaints.
These are times where you usually see your large lawsuits,
your
class action lawsuits that end in
double-digit millions of dollars.
So,
we're moving in the right direction to reduce those risks.
We've seen a lot from vehicle pursuits, as we talked about earlier,
our air support, our helicopters, the different approaches that we're making
toward keeping those lawsuits down.
So we're moving in the right direction.
Still got some work to do, and we're going to make sure that we keep the training
up and the strategy
to avoid these types of lawsuits in the future.
Thank you. I appreciate that. And once again, I commend you and your team for the
work. The DNC is a perfect example of what we're
doing well together. So thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you. We're going to go to Chair Hadden, followed by
Chair Sigcho-Lopez.
Thank you, Chair.
And thanks, Superintendent, for you and your team.
And I'll just echo my colleagues' sentiments for myself
and the residents of the 49th Ward, extending our condolences for the loss
of Officer Martinez.
A couple of quick things. One, just want to echo my support.
I know we had the opportunity to have a conversation.
I know Alderman O'Shea and many others have brought up our
concern about the reduction in positions around officer mental
wellness and mental health.
So would love to work with you and your team to see how we can bring those back.
Along those lines, I know there were a couple of grants for this
year that went to support first responder mental health.
So looking at-- I think there was--
Let's see.
There was one we received this year that we didn't receive, I think.
I don't see it in the 2025 budget.
There's one around 2.1 million as well.
Just wondering, if
we're
not seeing those grant funds come in for 2025, what the plans are
to continue those services.
And I think there's one that was issued for 2.1 million this year that looks like
it's being carried over. So are there plans to-- how will we use
those funds in the next year?
Hi, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So that is a grant that we got from the state.
We're sharing it with Fire, OAMC, and
us. So our share is 2.1. The big thing that we're trying to do with
that is a refresh on some of our gyms, notably at Homan
Square headquarters and our training academy on
Jackson.
What we are trying to move quickly on is we have a contract to buy the cardio
equipment, but the weight equipment, we're trying to move as quickly with that with
Department of Procurement Services because we have a six-month lead time in
order-- Once we place the order, it takes six months to get the equipment is what
we've heard. We don't have a
contracting vehicle right now. So anything we can do with the Department of
Procurement Services to get that
contract for weight equipment, we look forward to that partnership.
Okay. That's helpful to know. Thank you for that.
Switching gears a little bit, but also related to a grant award, just for a
different topic. It looks like there was a million dollar grant in
2024 for sexual assault kits.
It looks like we're carrying over the grand bulk of those funds, almost 800,000.
And just wondering,
could you explain
the timing? I know sometimes with the grants, we don't receive them in time, but do
we have a backlog of the sexual assault or the rape kits?
And how many were we able to process in 2024
related to those funds?
Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So I'm going to throw this over to Chief Vercetti in a second.
But basically, this is a recurring grant that comes out
every year. We're working through the process on our SAKI
grant. Our hope is that we can get that resolved
from a process standpoint and then begin reapplying year over
year. But I'll pass it over to the Chief.
Thank you.
Good evening. Antonetter City, Chief, Bureau of Detectives.
I want to talk about a unit that's in our bureau, the DNA Analysis
Unit. So they're regularly conducting audits to make sure that all of our kits are
being submitted in a timely manner, and that when we're getting returns from those
kits being submitted, if there's any CODIS hits or anything of evidentiary
value, that that's getting to the detective and it's being followed up on
immediately. So what this team is doing is managing that grant that you're talking
about. It's actually a partnership.
We have the Illinois State Police Forensics Lab.
We have our state's attorney. We're meeting regularly.
I talked a little earlier about the infrastructure that we have in place in our
areas, and we have these civilian investigative analysts.
They're the ones who are going through what's typically called a cold case.
But really, these are cases where it's been very difficult to develop
leads, and they're regularly going back to see is there something we can do,
for example, some bit of evidence that we could submit under this.
And so we now have a cadence set up, in addition to those regular meetings where
they're going through those cases together, that our investigative analysts are
submitting those cases to our DNA analysis unit so that we are regularly
having that come through and see what can we be submitting to keep these cases
moving forward.
Thank you for that.
And as you spoke to just kind of getting the administrative piece set up for
the grant,
are you confident that this is something we'll get going forward each year and that
we'll be able to use these funds?
Absolutely. We've brought a lieutenant to help us manage this.
And then additionally, we're bringing in some more civilian staff, ideally towards
the end of this year, with more of a focus on grants.
And they'll be able to do a little bit more blocking and tackling to identify
process issues, resolve it, similar to this contracting
issue on the wellness grant, where there's just pieces of the
bureaucracy that you have to be dogged to resolve.
Yeah. Got you.
Understand bureaucracy,
definitely.
Just a couple of comments then. So,
as being a representative of the 49th Ward, I'm in the 24th Police District, so
just want to echo my colleague, Alder Manaa
Hopenworth's comments on
supporting our commander in the 24th district, Allison Christian, and
the work that she's doing in the area.
I will say, speaking from my residents,
what will it take? And this gets to some of your comments, Superintendent,
and I'm asking this in the spirit of what can we do
side of it, right?
What is it going to take for us to get officers on foot patrol?
So our commander has done a good job at
getting our beats. Beats are covered.
She's good at getting assignments to our areas of special attention.
And I understand the resource pieces, but I do sometimes wonder, and I hear a lot
from my constituents of, how do we get people out of the car,
and walking around on the street and stopping in, and
would love to hear kind of your take on that, both from a
resource kind of allocation piece, but also from a cultural
piece.
It's always a great thing when officers are interacting
with our community members. And yeah, that's one of the focal points of
the strategic plan.
We want our officers engaging. And this goes back to
my belief that every officer should be a community police officer.
Because we do know that
there are people out there who really appreciate the police, and they want to see
them, they want to talk to them, and it helps build those
relationships. So,
what I can guarantee you is this, I've got an extremely competent
chief of patrol who will
be reaching out to
have that conversation about what the community is
looking for there.
Because
in engaging, I feel like some of it is
maybe your comments earlier, right?
Sometimes that reluctance or the fear or the concern.
There's the stress component.
Once you're out and walking around, people have questions for you.
Ask any alderman in city council,
right? You get out and walk around your neighborhood, you can't go to your grocery
store without people having questions or recommendations or ideas for you.
But I do notice a difference in when I started in
2019 and we just had a couple. We had
three officers who regularly when assigned to their beat,
they were out on foot. And I'm not sure what's changed in the kind of the
assignment or in the duty, but I know it's just not really the practice
much anymore. And I just don't know enough if it's like, "Hey, that's
officially not what you're supposed to do," or if it's a specific
role or assignment. So would love to definitely have that outreach
and work with you guys on that and seeing
what encouragement we can kind of provide or what things we can work on within our
district. Having
a lot of small commercial streets, that's what I hear most from kind of
constituents. We've got these commercial streets around our Red Line stations
with a lot of our small businesses.
And especially,
our commander's great about making sure we get kind of extra presence and attention
after we've had a shooting or something that's been traumatic.
But figuring out how we can regularly support, right, the
resources and the behavior for people to feel comfortable.
And by people, I mean the police officers, right?
Kind of walking around when it's not an emergency, right?
I think is also just as important.
Absolutely. We know that makes people feel a lot more safe.
So we will follow up with that. Absolutely.
Fantastic. And then just a second.
I think my colleague, Alderman Vasquez, already requested this, but also
just a plus one on those lists of kind of the
planned special events and what those eventual costs
have been in kind of police staffing time.
As
I did ask a similar question of Commissioner Hedspeth from
DCASE, and we certainly had that line of questioning around their
process. And I hope that with the information that her department
and your department provides us, we can, from the council side, work on
maybe a better process that gives you guys a
seat at the table. From what I hear, you don't have one.
A seat at the table so that we can better manage and join our resources.
Absolutely. We'll get that to you.
Thank you. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair Hadden. Alderman Sigcho-Lopez.
Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair, and thank you, Superintendent, and your team
for being here today.
Thank you.
My condolences to the Chicago Police
Department,
and all the family members of the victims, as well as all the
victims of senseless violence. I do think that it's one life too many, and I think
public safety belongs
to public servants, and I think we have a lot of work to do.
I have a few questions, just follow up.
A lot of it has been discussed. But I do want to
stress and talk a little bit in detail about the consent
decree.
I see that in the budget In line
9295, I think there's about-
What page are you on, Alderman?
It's page 306.
I think for the recommendation for this year, we got about $6 million
from about
$8 million in 2023. So in terms of
those $2 million, I think that you have said that there are certain
things in the consent decree that you're going to fight for.
So what are those aspects that you think are important to fight for
in the consent decree, and what are those
cuts in this line item?
Do you want to talk about it?
Yep. Hi, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
So that 9295 line that you see,
that's our consent decree line. The main reason you're seeing a decrease
there is we've taken some of our training
lines, and we're moving them from issue areas that
aren't necessarily covered by the consent decree, but they still are
training issues, right? So,
our forensics accreditation, that involves quite a bit of
training, but forensics accreditation isn't covered in the
consent decree. So to make sure that we're budgeting appropriately, we
moved that money out of that consent decree line.
Additionally, we moved money from that to
our helicopter pilot training. So we're still reinvesting in our
officers to make sure that they are well-trained, that they're practicing,
especially with forensics, in a constitutional way.
But if you read through the consent decree, it's not going to talk explicitly
about helicopter training, it's not going to talk about forensic lab accreditation.
So it's just moving things where we're maintaining the spirit of the consent
decree, where we're training our people, but we're just making sure we're budgeting
appropriately.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
My concern with this is in line
with some of the recommendations of the inspector general.
I think that in 2022, we paid about
$123 million in police
misconduct settlements. I think that is an astronomical
number for us every year. The inspector general
actually talked about addressing the risks that
this comes, but I'm really concerned about what I'm hearing in this body, that we
actually have to go away with some of those recommendations.
Increasing risks and not respecting the recommendations of
the consent decree, and I'm not talking about your department, but I'm talking
about
the politicization of legal mandates.
And I think that one of those risks, and
I will be direct with this question, is when we have
extremist groups in the department, like Oath Keepers in particular.
There are members of the police department, which is a handful of cases that
have cost millions of dollars alone to this body.
So when I'm hearing that we want to expand police stations, when I'm
hearing more of that, I also want to hear the responsibility
that comes with reducing those risks.
That's something that the inspector general has shown a lot of concern
about. I'm hearing also with Attorney General in terms of protecting
those safety nets and constitutional policing.
So can you respond to me around, we just had a hearing,
Business Affairs were hearing a hearing on this same body about the
concerns that I have, and many had, around extremism in the rank and
file.
Do you think those are risks that the department is willing to take given the
high cost with these kind of practices within the department?
So let me address that when it comes to the consent decree.
And
we know what the consent decree is designed to do, but
when we're talking about misconduct throughout
the department, we, as a police department, and
myself as a leader, shouldn't wait on the consent decree or shouldn't
depend on the consent decree to weed out corruption if we see
corruption and we find it. So
cuts to the budget, no matter what, is not going to
interrupt our focus on making sure that we have the most professional
department and that our officers are policing in the
most
constitutional way. So to rely on
the consent decree,
it actually would be less effective than
taking on the responsibility,
as a leader, to make sure that you're weeding out any level of
corruption. Now,
when we talk, and there's a lot of talk, and I realize that it's
not going to go away,
when we talk about extremist groups and we talk about Oath Keepers.
We, as a department, have worked with CCPSA
to recognize bias
individuals, bias behavior,
any bias policing that we see, any discriminatory behavior, or
discriminatory actions. Oftentimes, we
look at groups, and we look at affiliations,
and we judge people based on those affiliations.
And we sometimes have to be careful
because
when we look at, let's take something like gang database,
what is considered a gang,
and what would be in that database?
And if we don't have some clear way of
defining
what it is to be considered a hate group,
a
group that discriminates,
if we're not looking at the behavior,
then anyone who doesn't like
something or someone that they're affiliated with, they can call it
a hate group. I've heard people
call
Black Lives Matter a hate group. Are we going to
start looking at those affiliations?
What we need to look at is behavior.
What are these individuals doing that we, as a department,
can address outside of all collective bargaining and everything
else that's involved with this? And we need to do a deeper dive into
people's behavior. And I can tell you this right now,
we have had things come across our desks, my
desk, coming from IED, coming from COPA, where
we have identified this type of behavior.
And what we've done is taken clear action
on that type of behavior, because people who are
engaging in bias-based activity,
people who are discriminating against other groups, regardless of culture,
religion, whatever it is, they have no place in
this department. And we're going to make sure that we weed out
those people when we see that type of behavior.
So we're not going to depend on
the budget lines
around the consent decree to
deal with misconduct in this police department.
We have way too many officers out there doing a great job and putting their lives
on the line to let one, two, three individuals who are not here
faithfully ruin the reputation of this department and the
reputation of the hardworking officers who are putting their lives on the line.
If you look at any organization across the board, I
don't care where you are in this country,
there's somebody within that organization
who has biases,
who's discriminating.
And
as a police department, we know how that appears
because our police officers have power,
and we want to make sure that the power that they're using, they're using
in a way that the law
allows them to use it, that it's constitutional, and
that we're not discriminating against anyone.
So I can guarantee you this right now,
is that this police department
and the leadership that you see right here,
they're not going to tolerate it. I'm not going to tolerate it.
It's that simple. So the consent decree,
we're going to continue to work on the consent decree.
But when it comes to having members amongst our ranks who will
bring shame on this department and the hardworking officers of
the Chicago Police Department, we're going to step further. It's that simple.
So I'm glad to hear that we're not going to depend, and I think I agree with you,
we shouldn't depend on the consent decree.
There's a lot of work to do when there's only 7% of that that is being actually
committed and fulfilled. But I tell you that
it is concerning what Inspector General continues to insist that this
has to be something that we most evaluate to prevent those biases.
When you talk about hate speech and hate group, what I'm talking is about groups
that actually fit that very description of hate speech.
That's what I'm referring to. And then just because I'm out of time, I may have to
get a round two, but I do want to talk about this in
underrepresenting traffic stops, for instance. There's been an issue.
So maybe through the Chair, and I think
how much
the potential of biases, as you mentioned.
There's a concern about underrepresenting or underreporting traffic
stop
to pedestrian stops. The
study's potentially up to 200,000 in just
2023 alone. So there are concerns about bias in that
sense. So maybe through the Chair, and I think that maybe what is the
department doing to address those concerns through the Chair,
and maybe I just get a round two. I know that I run out of time.
We'll get that to you.
Thank you.
I'll put you down for round two. Alderman Cruz.
Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you. She's right there.
Thank you, Superintendent, for being here with us this evening.
On behalf of the 30th Ward residents and myself, I also want to offer my
condolences to you, to your department, and to Officer
Martinez's family as well.
Thank you.
As we talk about here and just listening to all my colleagues asking questions,
concerns, and things that we would like to see changes,
as anybody would like to see changes in everything we do, not particularly only to
your department, but across the board.
I do want to take the time to acknowledge those who have been helping me through
in my ward. I think it is important that we also acknowledge the
effort and the work that they're doing.
And I have been experiencing one too many
shootings in one of the parks in my ward, and Commander
Vana and Captain Reyes have been there with me, with my
community, addressing those issues, and we're still working like,
what do we got to work together to hopefully we have no more shootings around
that park. But they have been there answering my calls, showing up to
community meetings, speaking with residents.
So I want to express my gratitude to them, but also to the
commander from the 17th District, Commander Alvarez, who has also,
another part of my ward, has been there with me, with Sergeant
Coughlin as well,
being there with for my staff. And the 25th District
new commander,
Officer Chris, and
Sergeant Ramos as well. And I say these names because
I want to make sure that they feel also the gratitude from
my residents and myself, because I know it's not an easy task what
you all have to face day to day.
And I just want to take that moment.
But something that
has been brought up and
when we're trying to talk about community engagement with the
police, it is our CAPS meetings. How
do we change them? How do we reinvent them to make sure that there's
not the three same residents that come every single time?
That we have more people to participate.
So I want to suggest
maybe going back to workshops, things that will arm our
residents to be ready to call 911 and give a very good
detail of whatever the situation is.
And that used to happen before. So also echoing with
other woman, Maria Hadden said about
how do we get more police officers, more being on foot patrol,
their bikes. These are the things that we have seen before, but what
changed?
How can we go back to before CAPS, having more workshop,
more interaction?
What are the things that we can change
to make more productive and have more residents attend
these meetings?
So what I can do is
eventually turn this over to community policing.
However,
one of the things, and it was unfortunate,
when I was in Englewood, as soon as COVID hit.
And when COVID hit, that changed everything.
Mm.
People always, they showed up at these community meetings.
They showed up at the beat meetings.
The question now is how do we
get back-
Right
... and get away from the Teams and the Zoom calls
and get people back in seats and get them to locations?
Well, that coordinated effort has to happen through community
leadership, our police department, and
the alderman.
And the reason that it's important that everyone has to do their part,
because sometimes we have to remind people how important it is to
be at these events. So as the police, we can go and put
that information out. If there's some reinforcement
about the invitation, then maybe we can get people showing up.
The other thing that you might need to look at as members of the
community and the alderman's office, what time of day is
going to be
the most effective time to get the best number of people that you
can gather. Because we know people are at work, people have to pick
kids up from school. So what time is going to be best to
bring those people together? The other thing is topics.
If we know what those topics are in the community that they want to
have addressed, if you can get those topics to your
district commanders,
and I'm pretty sure that we can show up there with some
answers to address those topics. A lot of times, the first time we
hear concerns from the community is when we're at those
meetings. But if we knew what those
concerns were walking into that meeting, we'd be better
prepared to answer those questions when we walk in there.
Knowing
what the community is looking for, maybe we'll already have some resources
set up, so that would be very helpful.
And if there's anything you'd like to add,
Glen.
Director Glen Burks, Office of Community Policing.
Alderman, you're absolutely right, and so is the superintendent.
As we're coming out of COVID,
we need to refocus on those CAPS meetings, those beat
meetings. One, and then this is a very important part of it, were those
beat facilitators, to the superintendent's point, to make sure
that we have a clear understanding of the topics of that
beat. Two is really ensure that our staff is
there to service those communities.
In the last three years, we have really focused on making sure
that each one of the districts have a community organizer to do
that door knocking, to reach out to those block clubs and those residents to make
sure they're informed of it. And the other most important function
is that follow-up after that meeting to make sure that those
residents and that community knows the progress that's been made
with the
results of that meeting. I cannot stress, the last part is our
problem-solving and doing that jointly.
Where we've seen the most sustainable difference are in those communities when
we work with the residents to come up with those joint
solutions that really address the underlying problems, that go
beyond just the law enforcement, but deal with that problem
building. Deal with those young people who may be
heading or hanging out on a particular corner, and working with
our CBOs to address that. Those are the things that we're going to be
concentrating on. In the last two years, we spent a lot of energy
in building up the
infrastructure of the CAPS program.
We were really down before 2020. We were down to about
18 individuals. Through the support of the council and the
leadership of the department, we now have the personnel to really focus
in on those beat meeting and the infrastructure.
Thank you. This is very helpful. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Chairman.
You sure?
No round two?
Okay. All right. Very well.
Round two?
Okay.
We're on round two. Do I get round one or do I have to wait for
round one?
I'll get the
bonus round. Go ahead, Ray.
Let's start in round two. I'll mix in and out, no problem. Go ahead, Ray.
Thank you, Chairman, and again, good evening, everyone.
Superintendent, I wanted to just touch base with you
on something.
On a lighter note,
if you will.
Animals
Last month, Animal Care and Control announced that they're going to be having a
change in policy.
On the 22nd of October,
this email was issued stating that they're going to have reduced
hours and reduced intake, and
various other changes. But there was an associated memo that's
been circulating,
stating that
after 7:30 PM, there will be no staff
present at Animal Care and Control.
It then continues to go on and say that CPD
will be addressing animal care
issues, particularly scanning of animals for
microchips, housing them in districts, and ultimately bringing them,
at some point,
regardless of which district they are acquired in, to
the
center on the 2700 block of Southwestern Avenue.
I guess my first question is, were you aware that this has been
circulating?
That's new to me, Alderman.
Okay.
Do you feel that districts have the ability to
allow for officers, when they retrieve an animal,
to make it from wherever they're at to Animal Care and Control
on Western Avenue?
Here, I'll answer that question this way.
We know that our officers have been in the field and seen stray
animals, and we have officers who are animal lovers, and
they've
picked up stray animals,
and gotten them to their rightful owners if they were chipped,
or
called Animal Control. Our officers are not trained to deal with this.
We don't have the facilities to house
animals in this way. In most instances, when we locate
something like that, we call Animal Control ourselves.
Our officers are simply not trained or equipped to
deal with this. If it's an animal control situation where we have a vicious
animal, what is that officer supposed to do without proper equipment,
proper training?
Where is that officer supposed to now take this animal?
It's important to understand that
we cannot continue to put these types
of responsibilities on the backs of police officers.
That's why we have
other agencies. That's why they exist.
And
the chairman talked about this a little earlier, about
some of those jobs that we as police officers shouldn't have to
respond to.
And when you have people who have training and an
expertise in dealing with animals and animal control,
those are the people who should be handling those calls.
Okay.
And I appreciate that response. Animal
Care and Control has not been before the committee as of yet.
I'm sure this will be a
lively topic of conversation. And I do want to recognize that you do
have many officers who do go out of their way when possible
to help collect animals, bring them back to the districts if
they have cages, who've done the wands and all that, and I thank them for doing
that when they can. But I also recognize, I'm sure as many of
my colleagues do, that
tying an officer up for an hour in some cases, depending what district they're
coming from to Western,
takes them out of their beats, takes them away from their primary service, which is
protection of residents.
And I just wanted to make everyone aware that
that's an undue burden that I don't think your department, as you stated, is
prepared to handle and take on when it's somebody else's position.
So I appreciate your clarifying that for me. Thank you.
And thank you for all your good work.
And hopefully, I will say this since it just broke, I hope the mayor
reconsiders his decision, that was just announced while we
were on break, of attending
Officer Martinez's funeral. He's emphatically saying he's
going over the family's objections, and I think that's a wrong mistake, and I think
all of us here need to share our concerns that we don't want to make this
about politicians. This needs to be squarely about the service of
Enrique Martinez and helping support his family. Thank you.
Thank you, Alderman.
Thank you, Alderman Lopez.
Who wants to go next?
Oh, Alderman Vasquez. She had a list.
Go
ahead.
Thank you very much, Chairman.
Okay, so every year I ask this question,
and every year I get some response, but not to the level of specificity that I'd
like. I think clearly thinking about this budget, a number of us have talked about
revenue, but also efficiencies. And so when we think about CPD
recognizing its overtime,
I don't view it as headcount. I think we're asking officers to do things that
aren't really their responsibility.
We ask everything from festival security to parking
enforcement to dealing with homeless and everything else
that impede the core functions of apprehension, investigations, and
emergency response when appropriate.
What I really would like,
through the chair, is a list of responsibilities that CPD
feels shouldn't be their responsibility.
Because I think that's how we begin the conversation of building a transition as to
what departments do these other things that allow the actual folks out there that
are doing the work to focus only on the work and not get burned out.
So through the chair, would you be able to send a list of those things?
What we can do is sit, talk, have a conversation about what those things are.
Because
as a police department, we do want to be careful about sending a list of the things
we think we shouldn't do. Because there are some things out there that are very
important that other people think that we shouldn't do as
a police department. But if it's about people,
if it's about helping people, regardless,
when we have the opportunity as the police department, we show up.
Even if that means that we get there initially and we need to call someone
else for secondary help. So what we'll do is we'll sit down, we'll look at
those things, and we'll get some information back to you.
Okay. Yeah, definitely to get that schedule, because I think there's a reality to
the fact that even if we had that list, it ain't happening overnight.
Clearly, CPD's who we're calling for a lot of these things, that if we don't build
a ramp to actually help transition,
we're not going to get to the point where the officers who we clearly need out
there doing the core functions are able to, so-
Agree
... thank you for that. There's a number of gender-based violence positions
that were housed in CPD that advocates felt shouldn't be in CPD.
Are those positions in the budget again this year?
And can you talk about the positions and what they've achieved in 2024?
Hi, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the
Superintendent. So one of the things that we've done
in communication with the advocate community is we've changed the name of the title
code in complying with their ask and federal best
practices. So what you see here is Victim Advocate.
We've changed that to Victim Specialist, and then we're going to continue to work
to just make sure that as victims come in, we refer them to those
advocacy groups to make sure that there are bright lines between what we're
doing and then what they're doing.
Okay. So similarly to what I'd asked before, the way you kind of measure success
and tracking, if you could send through the chair kind of anything related to that,
because I think
at the end of the day, we just want to make sure it's effective and people feel
supported. So whether it's housed in one or the other, at base
minimum, just getting an understanding of that I think would be helpful.
So if you could send through the chair, that'd be great.
Absolutely.
I'm trying to rush through questions given the time.
So we keep hearing about the 200 detectives.
Take your time.
Oh, thank you. Thank you, Chairman.
We hear about the 200 detectives, but I'm curious as to whether there's been a
net gain or net loss since the term's begun.
Well, technically it's been a net gain.
What you have to look at in a department, especially when
it comes to
positions, detectives,
there are promotions that happen, there are retirements.
Yep.
So
as we make new detectives,
oftentimes we're replacing
detectives who have retired, those who have been promoted to sergeant and
moved on.
Right now we have 80
in the academy now who are going to come out, I believe, in a week
or Friday.
Okay.
Next Friday. So right now, I believe the net gain
is-- What's our number there?
We'll be at
1,147 once
those detectives come out.
What was it beginning of the term?
At the beginning of the term, we'll have to get that to you through the chair.
Okay. Yeah, because I heard things, it was like two extra detectives, and we're
waiting on the other 80 to come in. Is that accurate?
That's accurate. I'm not sure about the two.
Chief, would you have any information on that one?
Yep.
Antoinette Undercity, Chief of the Bureau of Detectives.
I think what would be helpful for me, though, is I'm trying to understand the
timeframe that you're looking at, and I think the challenge we have is the
fluctuations that the superintendent just described.
We do know that there's a net gain,
but I'm going to need a little more information, and it may have to come through
the chair. What timeframe?
Sure. It would've been, what is it? May 2023.
So here's what I'll tell you. Since then,
and that was the time that the mayor took office, and that was the
promise for the 200. The last 80 that we just put in
accounted for the total 200 number.
In that, and we'll look a little deeper into that, if at that
time the other
detectives that we put in, the
120, if our net gain at that point was two,
at this point, it's 82.
Yeah. Like I said, just for clarity because I want to make sure.
Attrition happens everywhere, just to make sure.
And then
two questions, Chairman, if I could.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Events, I know we talked ad nauseam about that.
I just want to know if CPD and you would be in support of three components.
Having CPD be a part of the contract agreements before a contract is signed,
because what I'm hearing is the contracts get signed with these folks throwing
events, and then CPD gets consulted after.
I'd like for the ability for CPD to say, "Hey,
we can't sign this contract unless they do X, Y, Z." Would CPD be in support
of that?
Yes.
Second, establishing a matrix
related to expectations according to different tiers of events.
You've got Lollapalooza, you've got Pride.
They're not the same thing, but having a matrix of like, "Here's what we
expect out of this tier."
Would you be in support of putting something like that together?
The key is that we'd like to be at the table for all of these things,
and measuring
those
case by case would be effective.
Sure. Absolutely.
Yeah. Definitely like a beginning conversation, but obviously
there's particulars to all of them.
And then lastly, which I think should be a no-brainer, and this is more
Department of Law, is including contract language that would prohibit future
permits for those who don't reimburse the city.
That's a good one.
That's not fair for him.
All right. Well, I'm just going to say I'm in support, and when Department of Law
comes, we're going to be asking them, because if you don't ante up, you shouldn't
get the chance to re-up next year. So thank you for that.
The bottom line is we would like to be at the table for these things.
Yeah.
Because to have us at the table for the discussion, we would have a little more
control over what happens.
Yeah. And we want to empower you to have the ability to do so, because again, to
everybody's point, the more events you have, if we're just having them, we're
pulling resources everywhere else where they're needed.
And so yeah, if somebody's not willing to pay the bill-
Yeah. I don't go to a restaurant, don't pay the bill, and then I come back next for
another meal. We're going to do the same thing for these folks if they're not
paying.
And lastly, with Trump coming and sanctuary city here, we
would just like to have a commitment to have a future conversation in the
immigration committee as to what preparation might look like and just have a
conversation, because I think people have a lot of questions.
So let me just go to Scott Spears-
Sure
... really quick on, because we want to be clear with
everybody of what it means here to be a sanctuary
city. So Scott, do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Yep. Scott Spears, general counsel to the superintendent.
We are still bound by the Welcoming City ordinance.
This is something that I worked extensively on in 2016, 2017.
No person in the city of Chicago, regardless of immigration status,
should be concerned that asking for help from the Chicago
Police Department could result in that person being subject to the
enforcement of federal civil immigration law.
So section 2.173 of the municipal code sets out our
restrictions.
The department cannot cooperate in the enforcement of federal
civil immigration law. That's immigration detainers, civil immigration
detainers, civil immigration warrants that are issued by ICE.
In addition, we have reporting requirements when we're asked to participate.
When ICE asks us to honor any kind of a warrant or a detainer,
we call that into OEMC. We issue a quarterly report that the
inspector general in the mayor's office makes public.
We're not allowed to enter into what's called a Section 1357g
agreement. That is a cooperation agreement between the federal government
and a local police department to assist in the enforcement of federal civil
immigration law.
I think the mayor has made clear that we're standing by our commitment as a
welcoming city, and that will not change.
Yeah. Thank you. And just to be clear, I don't doubt the commitment
and the will of the police department as far as being partners in this endeavor.
I just also don't doubt the craftiness of folks that are going to have four years
trying to figure out every possible way to mess with the city, whether it's
financially or otherwise, that I think just us talking about it.
For example, New York's comptroller has put together a risk assessment of what
happens if Trump guts everything going on in New York, and I think our city hasn't
done that yet. And so,
I'm definitely concerned, not just on this topic, but others, and so just want to
make sure we're all talking.
Yeah. And for us as a police department, being politically
neutral, we don't get into the politics of it.
We follow the laws around it.
Yeah.
That simple.
Yeah.
And that's what we're going to do.
Yeah. Like I said, thank you. I want to thank
Commander Beyer, Christian, Brennan,
Giltmere. It's just been incredible work.
I've learned a lot being in government and partnering with you all, and just want
to thank you so much for really opening the eyes of some of us who didn't have an
understanding till we got in here. So thank you, and thank you very much, Chairman.
We appreciate it. Thank you.
Alderman Suzuki Lopez.
Thank you, Chairman, and thank you again,
Superintendent.
Just a few follow-up questions. Around the issue
of overtime, and as you know, our community has one of the
highest number of festivals in
the city. So there's about 27,000 hours of
police time and just about 2,800 officers.
Through the chair, can you share with us how much of that is
spent in the 25th Ward?
And the reason why I want to be specific is because,
as you know, just in a regular summer,
we have a district that is very busy on 18th Street on a given
weekend without those festivals.
And
we have made a request. We discussed about the potential of having an
entertainment unit for the area. I think that it'd only
be fair that residents see a real benefit.
So I think to your point,
it is important that we discuss this process with decays, because if we
are approving those festivals and the burden is on the same taxpayers
who ultimately are inconvenienced by these festivals, I do think that we're
getting the short end of the stick.
So I would love to have the collaboration and conversation.
So through the chair, we can get just something specific on those man-hours
that are spent and how we can discuss a better process with decays.
Because I think those are
numbers that we can discuss about the benefit to the city.
My next question has to do with
technology, the technology use. I know that there have been discussions around
the technology for
ShotSpotter.
My concern is, again, not following recommendations of the inspector general.
And I think that I would like personally to spend more time working with
you and the administration on alternatives that work.
This software has been discontinued in other cities.
I do think that there's room for technology, but I do think it's
important that we follow recommendations of the inspector general.
The state's attorney already has shared also a report, and academics on the area.
How do you see-- Is this a conversation where we can put our emphasis?
I know, like I said, there can be efficiencies on overtime.
I believe that
we can get reimbursed by festivals. I do think that is only fair.
But within the use of technology, I would like to see more of our time
spent in discussing and collaboration how we can use that than going back of the
same conversations and going back to the past.
I don't think that that serves the purpose of the city.
So just in terms of how do you see that conversation play out?
Is this something that we can, rather than getting stuck in those conversations,
work with you to find a role of technology that is built by consensus?
Well, right now, there's an RFI out there
regarding technology.
And if I can, I'll reach over to Dan Casey just
to talk a little bit about it
Office of Public Safety Administration IT.
We support the police department with their technology needs.
One thing that might be getting to there when you talk about
overtime, Alderman, is with the RMS, as the superintendent mentioned
earlier. That's going to help cut down on the report writing that officers do and
get them back out on the street, back in their beats.
But there's also with the RFI, we look forward to seeing what comes out of that.
There's a lot of things that we don't know about, so it'd be good to see what's out
there and then absolutely we'll do that in collaboration.
And
one of the things that he's talking about with the RMS, I'm sure you're aware of
the Records Management System, that's going to help our officers be a lot more
efficient in their report writing.
Our systems will now talk to each other.
We don't have to worry about data not looking the same if it's
drawn from one system to another.
Everything will talk to each other.
This is going to reduce the amount of time that officers are spending writing
reports and in the district. That in and of itself can
reduce levels of overtime.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent.
I really appreciate that, what we can do.
Thing is,
in my opinion, politicization of safety issues, I rather have that
conversation using facts and evidence.
I think some of us would like to make sure that we have a budget that is
balanced. I think there's time for us to have a discussion
on overtime and how we can use technology.
But I personally do not want to operate without a budget or worse,
trying to extend this process past Christmas time.
I do think that your leadership in that, building consensus with the council and
administration is going to be pivotal, so I look forward to working with you.
Thank you, Alderman. And
I'd like to just address one thing,
and I know you spoke about it earlier, and
the conversation around the IG report when it
comes to the Oath Keepers.
I can tell you
that Chief Talley
worked on this,
and we've actually reached out to the Inspector General's office.
And I'd just like to just quickly just to talk
about what your plans were around the
investigation and involving the Inspector General's office.
Chief Yolanda Talley of the Bureau of Internal Affairs.
At the start of this investigation,
we completed a thorough investigation.
The Inspector General requested that we reopen the investigation,
and we did. We also requested that the Inspector
General office would partner with us in this investigation.
We have other agreements with other investigating agencies like the
FBI, like COPA, that partner with us on
investigation, and we requested that, and we were
declined-
Mm
... by the Inspector General's office.
Not that that would've changed anything about the investigation, but we wanted to
be transparent. If there was something they could help us with, because they do
have subpoena powers,
we would've appreciated that, and we wouldn't have had to open,
close, reopen the investigation.
So we're willing to work with any agency when it
comes to investigations. We're open to partnering with any
investigation when it comes to accountability. That's all I have.
Yeah. Thank you, Superintendent.
I know that there's been calls for a task force potentially, and I do think it's
good to hear that we want to work in collaboration.
I think our residents obviously are concerned, and I think it's
good to hear that we want to have a path towards collaboration to a task force or
something of the like. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Alderman. Alderman Anna Hoppenworth.
Hi.
I'm sorry. Manna Hoppenworth.
Thank you, Chair.
Hi. I had one follow-up question, and it has to do
with...
Well, firstly, I'm looking forward to the workforce allocation study.
I'm very interested in that.
But also, I'm curious to know from you,
because I believe that you all do so much.
I
think about the transition that we are in right now,
with the CARES team,
to bring non-police to mental health
crises, and we need that here in Edgewater, too.
But generally, I think that
you all do a lot. And so I'm just curious to know if you
think that there are parts of what you all do that
other departments could also do?
Like the finance department could do?
I'm sorry. Can you clarify a little more?
So she-- What she's asking, are there functions that you all do that other
departments can do? And is she like, I guess one example would be ticket
writing by the Department of Finance versus Police Department.
Is that a fair statement? Okay.
Yes. Yes. Thank you, Chair.
Well, that's one thing, but
we can get you the same information that we're giving to Alderman Vasquez,
because he pretty much asked the same question.
There are some things, but even when you talk about ticket writing,
the police still have to have the ability to write those tickets.
Now, that
doesn't necessarily have to be their first priority, but there are
times when officers need to write those tickets.
So we wouldn't take that type of responsibility away from
our officers, but we'll get you that information through the chair.
Thank you.
Because in my area, the businesses and the
residents, we trend older adults, and we have so many schools, so
practically anywhere in the ward is a safe school zone.
People are just asking for your presence
They just wanted to go back to the days where they knew
who the beat officer was in that business corridor.
For instance, on Argyle or on Bryn Mawr, and they long
for those days. And I don't know if we're ever going to get back to those days.
But,
anyway, I want to put that out there too, to also say thank you
again. Our CAPS teams are incredible,
and we want to continue on that relationship.
And again, shout out to my commanders that I've been working with in the
20th and 24th, including Beyer and Vana, and they've
moved on. Now we have Commander Allison Christian and also Beth
Gildmeyer. And,
yeah, I think that we're
doing great working together. But again, we would love to see more foot
patrols or bike patrols in the area.
That is what my people are asking for.
We're looking forward to talking to the district commanders about that.
Thank you.
And then I also wanted to shout out to Director
Brooks for your help. We've had
several troubled buildings and hotspots in the area and
where we had to coordinate
across quite a few agencies, including the state's attorney and our
schools and our parks. So I appreciate your
responsiveness.
Thank you.
Glenn, you don't have a response? Oh, I'm surprised.
Okay.
Alderman Moore, you got anything? All right, Alderman Lee.
Thank you, Chair.
Boy, wouldn't it be great if we got back to the times when I'd see a squad car
certain time of month sitting at a stop sign?
I think we all long for that. But that's not the reality we live in today,
and I can appreciate
the desires. We have the same-- I think many of our constituents are looking
for that, too.
Going back to staffing and staffing needs.
And one of the things that I've come to learn
about just
how
organizationally things work is the importance of
sergeants, the role that sergeants play on a daily basis.
Can you talk about
the current average span of control for sergeants in the
department? How does this
compare to what the consent decree is looking for-
So the-
... in terms of appropriate span of control?
So good question, Alderwoman. And as
Ryan is looking through the book for the numbers, what I will tell you is
last year what we worked out
with the officers' positions, we traded up
four additional sergeants, additional lieutenants, and
captains so that we could get to that level, to
the span of control that's expected under the
consent decree.
And since then, we have promoted
a pretty high number of sergeants and lieutenants.
And what we're trying to do is keep that top number staffed fully.
So Ryan, you want to talk a little bit about those numbers?
Yes. Thank you, Superintendent. So right now we're sitting at
1,302 sergeants. So we're up
slightly from last year, which we were at
1,290 on the 15th. So we are
trending up by 10. I think part of this is as we get the workforce allocation
study-
Mm-hmm
... we have at this point 115 sergeant vacancies to
reallocate to make sure that we are actually set and responsive to
that study.
That's great.
What are we doing right now to strengthen the relationship between officers and
their sergeants?
I got into a really interesting conversation about just, again, not realizing the
importance of what a sergeant does on
duty that day with all of the officers that they
supervise. I'm interested in what sort of training we provide to sergeants as
they're promoted. If there's anything in particular with their new duties as
they're leading officers
for whatever watch they're on, for whatever amount of time.
Because that sort of leadership matters and it trickles down, obviously.
We're talking a lot about lawsuit settlements and stuff like that.
So I'm just interested in what the training is, and if there's anything specific
that we do, sort of develop the kind of leaders that
will continue to, I think from a constitutional policing perspective, lead by
example, and make sure that we're
balancing all that.
So
there's initial training,
onboarding for new sergeants.
When they go through the academy, they go through five weeks of
training.
Then they hit the field. So for the most part, what we like to do is put them with
a seasoned sergeant
to learn
just the tricks of the trade. I remember becoming
sergeant and I was placed in a district where they were short sergeants.
So I was just kind of on my own. I kind of winged it at the time
and learned as I went along.
But what we're doing now, again, working with the University of Chicago, is
developing
leadership courses and supervisor courses
to further train,
because our command staff has been through it, and to further train all of our
supervisors.
This is going to be important moving forward, just to make sure
that our supervisors are well prepared.
Because it's not just about that initial training, it's about continued
training. It's about continuing the education
around the leadership and what's expected of our officers.
We know that things are ever evolving within the department, and we want our
supervisors to keep up with those changes.
Absolutely. Thank you. That's music to my ears, and to know that you're doing work
with the University of Chicago. I'm assuming the crime lab, so you're working
with there. That's great, because what we want more than anything is
to set all of our officers, our sergeants, anybody that's on the force up for
success. And the training's a big part of that.
I have a couple through the chair requests, and I'll rattle them off because I
don't expect you to have any of these, but I'll just get them on the record.
In case I missed it earlier, can you please provide through the chair the number of
vacancies in each division or department within CPD as of the end of
October of 2024?
And then please provide the number of persons hired by division or department,
distinguished between civilian and sworn,
through the same date, October 31st, 2024, as opposed to the
previous year.
And then, do you guys do any tracking of how much time is spent
on writing reports? I know this is a very time-consuming, taxing thing.
We talked about technology that's coming on board.
But it was a question that we tried to get some answers from OAMC,
but they don't do any of that sort of study, so we thought we'd ask you.
It's extremely hard to do.
Only because you'd have to track every single arrest, or every time
an officer is down doing a report.
And then to try to figure that out, each report is
different.
There are some reports that may require more notifications,
a deeper dive into an investigation, which may take a lot
longer. So that's really hard to
track
time-wise. But what I can tell you overall is that our
officers spend an enormous amount of time in the district
filling out reports, depending on an event that occurred.
If an officer makes an investigatory stop, which
turned into a foot pursuit,
and the individual had a gun and tossed it, and
then as the officer goes to take
the individual into custody, he fights with the officer, the officer
subdues him. There's so many reports to do right there.
You've got your foot pursuit. You've got your
investigatory stop report. You've got your case report.
You've got your arrest report. And then you have a tactical response report.
Something like that happens, that officer is probably off the street the rest of
the night.
Got it.
So can someone talk about the kind of work that's going on right now to streamline
that? I'm
not discounting the importance of reporting. It is very important.
But the number of different systems that we're talking about and the number of
different reports, I'm just wondering where there's redundancies in the types of
information too. Like why couldn't it be one long report that
has all of these different aspects to it?
I'm probably asking a really rhetorical question at this point.
I just know that there's an inordinate amount of time that is
spent on writing reports, where we need to do whatever we can to find
efficiencies for you so that the officers can be out on the street
versus behind a desk writing a report.
Well,
this
is why the RMS system is very important, our records management system.
So that these systems are talking to each other so that things could auto-populate.
Mm-hmm.
Because these reports have to be done.
This is something that's absolutely necessary.
But if we could get
each one of those reports to auto-populate
the arrestee's name
or even the narrative-
Mm-hmm
... that's written, and then there's consistency across
all reports. That's why the records management system is extremely
important. Without that, trying to streamline
a report like that
is as difficult as everything is right now.
So we do need to work on getting that RMS system in place.
Once we can get that in place, we will see a reduction in the amount of time
that officers are spending inside of a station.
Great. And Dan, we may have asked this question the other day with OAMC, and I
apologize if this is redundant, but do we have a sense of what the
timeline is for that in terms of just different stages of
implementation?
Dan Casey, Office of Public Safety Administration, IT.
We have an RFP that's active right now, so we've got to be somewhat careful in how
we discuss this.
Sure.
But there is an RFP. Unlike an RFI, that will have proposals with dollar
amounts, and we can create a contract off that.
We expect there to be several respondents.
We expect to be great competition and a great price for the city.
So our expectation, that's going to close here very shortly.
We have already assembled with a lot of police input here.
Almost every bureau is
represented on that evaluation committee.
And so that evaluation committee will dig into those proposals that we get.
We'll weigh them by price and everything else, and by
foremost its ability to solve CPD's challenges for
the report writing. And then we will implement them once a
contract is signed. So that takes time with the city, especially the contract
discussions and negotiations, as you're well aware. That could take a few months.
But I will tell you that the law department,
the commissioner's been very much engaged in this and pushing their folks,
just like the superintendent's been very engaged in it.
And so we're all focused on this, and it is a high priority for the mayor.
Okay. Thank you.
Chair, just a couple more, if that's okay.
Mm-hmm.
With respect to
ShotSpotter, I know it's been deactivated.
I'm just wondering, since they've been decommissioned,
what have we seen? I know a couple of my colleagues have commented on it earlier.
I think at the ward level, we continue to encourage people to
call the police if they see anything, hear anything.
Has it become more difficult to
locate the exact location of a shooting when someone calls in?
I'm wondering how many more calls we're getting at this point.
I tried to ask this question, I asked for it through the chair of OEMC.
But I guess anecdotally, I'm just wondering what that experience has been.
Because I imagine that it's become a little bit more difficult to narrow down where
something's happening if we don't have the science and the
technology that can pinpoint a location better than
folks calling in
from their homes, not knowing necessarily where shots are coming from.
Well, I can tell you a couple of things.
Number one, start with OEMC.
Have a great partnership
with Jose Torrado, who heads up OEMC.
It's really still early
in the process of figuring all of these things out. Excuse me.
We're going to need
more time to do an analysis. Now, what I can tell you is
if there's shots being fired and someone calls in and they don't know
where those shots came from, and we had technology in place that would've
detected the exact location or an address,
obviously, we could've pinpointed
the location, looked for a crime scene, that type of thing, and looked
for victims also.
So,
that is
one of the things that we lose when we lose that type of technology.
So, that is there. But to
give you a complete analysis of what we think
the true effect is, we're going to need a little more time, and I will
work-
Yeah, fair enough.
And I think you've given me just the
confirmation on
what I think everybody suspects, right?
If you don't have the technology to sort of really pinpoint a location,
more police resources have to be spent on trying to locate where that's happening.
So I know you don't have hard data for me, and that's fine.
I appreciate that you're going to be evaluating that.
On the issue of language access, I'm going to ask this all the time, just on
behalf of the Asian-American community as well.
I want to really compliment you and the
9th District in particular on the work that they've done
and all of the leadership that's come through the 9th District over the years,
from Don Jerome to Kurt Mullinax, and now Joe Mark,
to really
work on recruiting
officers that speak Mandarin and Cantonese.
I can't tell you the difference that that's made in my community in terms of
people's
willingness to engage with the police, call police.
There's still lots of work to be done, but
any work that we can continue to do to do recruitment.
I know you've got two great officers on that recruitment team that are
Asian-American that are out there as well.
I asked last year about
training for individuals in terms of just language.
I'm Chinese American. I was born here.
I speak more Chinglish than I do proper Cantonese.
Chinglish is a thing. It's a thing, I promise you.
Just like Spanglish.
Where I have enough to sort of get by, but I couldn't
do a police report. And I think that there are, as the generations
go, more American-born Chinese may not have the types
of language qualifications that someone who has spoke it their whole
life might have. But
are there opportunities to provide language training for people who are
interested in
developing those skills?
So first of all, let me just thank you for your efforts in helping
us recruit
to
get more Asian officers on the job.
I'll turn this over to Chief Novalis, who'll talk a
little bit about this.
Chief Agent Novalis, Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform.
So one of the things that I wanted to talk about in regards to what we're doing to
effectively create those communication chains is that we
have currently, and we've had this for over a year now,
we've adopted the Language Line application, which is on the phones
of the officers. So there's over 6,000 in patrol alone, where
officers could use that for translation.
Second, we've just entered into an agreement with a company called Berlitz, who
developed a tool so we can certify our officers.
So they're actually certified translators, which they meet a certain threshold
where they're able to take those reports and communicate with officers and victims
of crime to ensure that we document those incidents
properly. What we want to do is ensure that that communication exists,
that the folks feel supported. And those translators will be
there to not only take the reports, but also help in other aspects of the
department where translation would be needed.
That's great, and Berlitz is a great company.
I appreciate that the department's using
Language Line. Through the chair, if we can get just the number of
times by language and by ward,
how many times the Language Line was accessed by officers,
I would appreciate that.
Looking at...
I'm sorry, just totally lost my train of thought. It's going to come back to me.
The gremlins in my computer again. Okay.
My last question is about
the new offices of Crime Victim Services and Office of Equity and
Engagement.
And this is fine through the chair.
How many of the 59 positions in the Office of-
... crime victim services have been hired or
of the seven positions that are in the Office of Equity and Engagement.
Yeah.
We've talked about,
Alderman
Vasquez talked about the gender-based violence as well.
And that this is also through the chair.
Can you tell us how many detectives are dedicated to domestic violence and
sexual assault? I'm assuming they fall into the Special Victims
Unit. And then how many civilian advocates have been hired in the last
fiscal year?
I think that's all I've got, Chair.
We'll get it all to-
Yeah
... through the chair.
That's great.
One quick thing I will say, our
Assistant Director, our... Hi, Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director,
Office of Superintendent. Our Assistant Director of the Victim Services is
currently posted, so please encourage everyone to apply to that, along with our
Senior Equity Officer is posted. We would love to get many more candidates for
that, along with two of our equity officers.
So whatever we can to get people who are interested in helping us, please encourage
them to apply.
We definitely will. And then with those through the chairs, if you can
just distinguish between civilian and sworn, and then I remembered what
the last question was. So OEMC is the first line of defense.
When someone calls 911, they're the ones that are dispatching resources.
And we understand there's priority.
If someone's life is in danger, that's going to be the top priority.
But if someone
has robbed somebody, they've driven off with their car,
that's probably a lower priority than someone who's getting shot or is bleeding
someplace.
I know that gets prioritized at a lower priority.
But what work is-- Is there work going on in the background?
Like does that go to the SDSC room
for someone to look at video? I don't necessarily know enough about how that sort
of the mechanics of that works. Like if
the call taker has now got a license plate and a description of a car,
I assume that information gets passed on to whoever the responding officer's going
to be. But does that also go to someone who's looking at a video screen
or can punch up...
I don't know how that works.
So there's a-
So forgive my ignorance.
No, that's not a problem. So there's a few things here.
I can actually--
Anybody up there can add something to this, but we'll start with the Bureau of
Patrol and any other chief that wants to chime in.
Good evening, Alderwoman.
Great point. So obviously, the call comes into OEMC,
if it's not on viewed by the officers.
But if the call comes into OEMC, I'm sure it's triaged on the sanctity of
life that the superintendent talked about, or level of urgency, how quickly it's
dispatched. Once the officer, whether he or she arrives quickly,
they're able to gain a description.
They'll put out that flash message to the district, at which time when even the
call comes out, officers in the SDSC room will start to monitor that area through
the pods, possibly the plate readers, if they have a plate.
Whatever physical descriptions that they have that they'll put out to start to
monitor.
Hopefully, and willing, the PH1 is in the air, and everything starts to coordinate
or triangulate to that area where the offense took place.
But absolutely. So the technology starts to begin right when that call
is dispatched.
Good evening. Anne Tender, City Chief Bureau of Detectives.
And then just to build off of that, I told you I'd be remiss.
I knew there was a bunch of units I forgot.
But I want to mention our vehicular hijacking team.
And they've done such incredible work over the past few years.
Hate that I missed them, and I think it's really relevant to this response here.
It's important to know that they're 24/7, and they're embedded in the OEMC.
And they are able to realize when there's calls or assignments that are pending,
and then they're able to coordinate.
I can't say enough, and hopefully that came through today.
There is
very excellent coordination across with our bureaus, and information
is coming out in real time. And then another unit to mention that I think is very
relevant here is our citywide robbery task force, and that they're out there at
those key hours when incidents are happening.
So I think when you're wondering about the priority of assignments, I think it
was very strategic and intelligent to make sure when the vehicular hijacking team
was formed, that they were embedded in the OEMC and that they actually do have
somebody there from the OEMC who's able to see those assignments pending, and
they're able to coordinate, blast that out.
And just as Chief Hein had said, we're talking about getting that information out
to our strategic decision support centers.
It's really a very incredible network in how quick that information is being
shared.
Good evening. Chief DeVries from the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
Also, the officers are equipped with a CAD system, and that CAD system
has all the pending jobs on it. And a lot of times, our officers are
self-initiated. If they're not on a job already, they will see that high priority
job, and they will start heading that way right away, especially our more
aggressive officers that are looking for the guns, et cetera, our TAC teams.
And then also same with CPIC. They have the board up.
If you ever took a tour of CPIC, they have an entire board with all the pending
jobs, and all the jobs are out there, and they list them by color code with
priority. And they also have the ability to assist in
dispatching and calling the districts and notifying them.
And then like with SWAT, they get the immediate notification.
SWAT doesn't wait around to be told there's a SWAT job.
They get notified immediately of that from the districts.
So they're self-initiated and heading to that direction before the job becomes
officially dispatched. As well as like our CAS team who
is monitoring with the large parties that occur in districts, and they're notifying
directly to the district. So before even a call might come out about a party or a
gathering of a party, they're already getting that information, giving it to the
district watch commanders who are then dispatching their own people to head to that
location.
Thank you. I didn't know I was going to get so many answers. That was great.
I
want to just end with I really appreciate all of the work that
you all do, and recognizing all of the challenges that
you face every single day, not the least of which is just how you manage any
single interaction
with
someone who might be breaking the law,
and trying to protect everybody and yourself around you.
So thank you for all that you do. I may have some other questions.
I'll just send them to you guys directly.
Everybody from the top to the down through the
ranks, really, Superintendent Selling, thank you for your leadership And all that
you've been doing to really make a difference in this city.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Vice Chair Lee. I just got a couple items.
There's the conversation around a discipline matrix.
Where are you all with that and
development? And then secondly, I know that there's something that has to
be bargained with the union. If you haven't gotten to that stage, when
do you anticipate that moving forward?
I'll turn that over to Chief Talley.
Good afternoon.
Chief Yolanda Talley of the Bureau of Internal Affairs.
Just yesterday, we actually had a meeting about this.
I know there has been language
that we've worked out with the Sergeants, Lieutenants, and Captains Association.
We're still working with FOP.
In our case management system, we had some conversation about what that
matrix would look like. But we're moving in the right
direction. As I mentioned, FOP is the only one that
we're still in negotiations with as far as the CR matrix.
But we do
meet with COPA monthly. This has been a topic of
conversation. We've been talking about this for quite a while.
So hopefully we'll see
something in the near future.
Okay. Thank you. I know people have touched on the issue of
span of control,
and you guys have upped your number of sergeants through
the budgetary process. If you don't
know this, so just approximate, how many sergeant vacancies do you have,
or supervisory vacancies do you have out there?
Yes. Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director, Office of the Superintendent.
As of today, we are looking at
16 lieutenant vacancies and 115
sergeant vacancies.
And what is the plan to fill those?
The plan to fill those,
again,
as we have recruit classes leave, because again,
we don't want to deplete
patrol. We will promote
incrementally. We just had a sergeants exam.
So I don't believe the
results are back from the second half of that exam yet, but we
expect that soon. And as soon as that happens, we'll start to
promote from this new test.
And we'll get those numbers up to speed.
But I'm always just careful about
over-promoting at a time where we know we need
bodies on the street. So we will get to those
numbers.
We are recruiting the best that we can right now, but we're going to
start to push that a little harder to make sure that we're hiring
for the positions that we have unfilled right now, and we'll get
to those numbers.
All right.
And I'm going to tell you why this
gets at me a little bit. Almost every video
that we see
craziness, and I'm just using that term very loosely,
you generally don't see supervisors.
And to me, it's like if our
supervisors are... And I asked this question of
OEMC,
how are supervisors dispatched? Or are supervisors even
dispatched when certain types of incidents come up?
Because it seems like the incidents that tend to lead us with the
higher risk issues, lawsuits, other stuff, bad
videos, all of that, we find that there's not a white shirt
anywhere around. And that's just anecdotally for
me that I see. I know one challenge is that without
adequate supervision,
things can go awry. So when you say that we
don't want to deplete the ranks, I'm
almost at a space where I don't know if we can afford not to have
adequate supervision
even though
the pool of people that we get from one is out of the other.
But the point about having adequate supervision, I think is very
key to us moving forward on items with the consent decree,
and just maintaining that adequate span of control.
And I understand your point about the depletion.
But at the same time, I think the supervision is vital for any
organization in order to adequately
give out the directives and things that people are asking for.
You're 100% right, but let me put a little context to that.
So you have a supervisor or sergeant who has
eight
officers. Let's just say four vehicles on
his or her log.
Now, the supervisor
is not able to follow every officer around at each
time. So if you see something
going awry in a video,
it may be at a job that this officer was going to,
and the supervisor is with another team
of officers. Now that supervisor will eventually make their way
to the scene.
What we can't expect is for our supervisors to
hold the hands of every single
officer on every single job. This is why it's important
To put the message out to the officers so that they are the best, the most
well-trained, most well-prepared when they go to jobs.
A lot of times when you see officers doing something like that,
maybe we've waited too late to intervene with some of the
actions, or maybe these are young officers who need some more
guidance. We have to make sure that we're training our officers the best that we
can, and that our supervisors, right out of roll call,
are putting out expectations, constantly checking on these
officers. And that's the direction that we're moving in right now.
So I
get your concern, and you're 100% right, but these
officers are not always going to have a supervisor around.
This is why we have to make sure that there's accountability on the
officers to do the right thing, even when there's no supervisor looking.
So, until we do that, we're not going to reduce it.
We can put a million supervisors. You would have to put one in every single
car.
Oh, no. That I understand. I'm not asking that
occur. But we do know and understand that
supervision is important-
100%
... in that respect.
Another question
is in relation to the medical
section. So
I
end up in these conversations with my wife, because she
sits on the pension board for the police department, and
what
we talk about, she sees what I'm looking at and from a
budgetary perspective, and then they have people that are
being sent back to the department that have
been cleared medically, but can't qualify for
whatever reason, with you guys to be fully able to come
back to work. Even though they've been cleared of their disability
medically, why isn't it that we can have those
officers performing some other task in the
department, even though they're cleared medically by the pension board,
but
for whatever reason, can't get cleared by you?
And why would there be a separate standard for them
than you guys if
we're all here on the same team?
I would have to look at each case with something like that.
Joy Brown, would you like to talk about that a little bit, about how officers are
reinstated from
disability?
Sure. Director Brown, OPSA HR.
So I can't speak specifically about the process because I don't work
in the medical section, but I will say
that
if a member's doctor clears them, that doesn't mean that they meet the standards
that the department has set for what's called limited duty.
And so there are distinctive programs in which an officer may qualify
for. So just because a member's doctor has cleared them, doesn't mean
that they're going to be necessarily cleared
in a different capacity by the medical division.
But
if they're not disabled, then what are they?
Then they should be disabled. If they can't medically perform the job, then
shouldn't they be disabled?
Well, here's the difference
when you have someone who's limited duty.
They're getting paid. If someone then applies for duty
disability,
they're getting paid, but they're not working.
So
depending on the level of disability, let's say someone is injured on duty
and
they go to disability, and they get full duty disability at
75% of the salary, and they're not working.
We have someone who can function
on an admin level,
and they're getting paid, and they're continuing to pay into the pension at this
point. So
it's kind of a tricky situation.
Yeah, but these are folks that are on
disability that aren't paying into the pension,
and are basically
disabled department members that
in my opinion, as a layperson, should be able to perform some function
on behalf of the taxpayers. Now,
can they go and effectuate arrest?
I hear the largest issue is that they can't qualify with their weapon.
But aren't there other opportunities that could be made
available for them if they've been medically cleared to
come back to work?
Well, we've seen this, and here's what I will
tell you. And I've personally seen this.
And we can do a deeper dive on this and get some more information back to you.
But we've seen situations where someone was cleared to
come back from duty disability, but with limitations.
And we've seen that, the paperwork, they're limited.
They can't stand for this period of time.
So what we've done is we've found positions for them to work.
And a lot of times it's an admin position.
Okay.
So they do return to work,
and we do make sure that we find some work for them to do at some point.
So we do work on that.
We'll do a little deeper dive just to get you more details on it, but we do know
that this is case by case.
Okay. Only reason I bring it up, I was told it's running maybe
$6, $7 million a year
for the pension fund to carry these individuals still under
disability status, because
they send them to you all, you send them back to them.
It's a quagmire, but again,
it's just something I think with the civilianization Even though you don't want to
lose the experience, there's got to be something that people
can do.
I had two other issues. One, I think someone broached earlier, I may not have been
in the room, about members working in establishments
that serve liquor.
And my understanding is that is not allowed
under you all's general orders, and
why?
Police officers work a ton of places, but
establishments that serve liquor, for whatever reason, has been not allowed.
But we need to be clear about that because
I believe it's an establishment that solely
sells alcohol.
Scott, do you have the
order on that?
Chief Yolanda Talley, Bureau of Internal Affairs.
As far as working in your
uniform with identifiers as a police officer in an
establishment, that is not allowed.
Most of the officers that work secondary employment, they are not working
inside of the liquor establishment.
They're working outside in plain clothes as
security.
Does that answer your question?
Yes and no.
What is wrong-- I was in Atlanta,
and I was at a restaurant, and there is a guy in an
Atlanta police uniform at the restaurant working
security.
I didn't necessarily see anything wrong with that, because for
us, if the officer announces his office, we're on the hook.
Why not have the guy in uniform available and ready to
respond if something is going on? I know we have a
history of saying no. I can recall one
time when
officers were allowed to wear CPD
uniforms in a private security setting,
and I thought that why wouldn't we allow for this
as officers, because they are officers, and they're still our responsibility.
So what you've seen, and I've seen it in other places.
I've seen it across the country, where there's an
officer in full uniform standing inside.
Those officers are working. It's
part-time
and it's overtime. So
those officers are not working
for the police department, but there is an agreement.
And now, when that officer is in uniform, even when they're working off
duty for this establishment, once they're in uniform, they are
representing the department at that point.
So anything that happens that they do
at that time, the liability is on the Chicago Police Department
because they're representing the Chicago Police Department at that time.
So we do know that across, and I've seen it in
DC, I've seen it in New Orleans, where officers in full uniform
were standing in these establishments.
And I
haven't seen them in bars, but I have seen them in restaurants
where they serve alcohol.
And what's wrong with that? My question really is
what's wrong with it? Because again, if something happens,
we're going to get roped in anyway.
So if we're going to get roped into a situation, as a
member of council, I would prefer the officer to be fully uniformed with all of
his equipment, all of his things that he would normally have in any other
situation, versus him with a T-shirt on and
maybe a gun and his handcuffs,
where he potentially could diffuse the situation because the uniform in itself
does
help.
And so I don't know why
Chicago has adopted a position of not allowing
for that. Secondly, we continue to ask businesses,
especially
in challenging communities, to
get security. Well, damn it, the
best security that I would like to see for these businesses to have are
members of the Chicago Police Department, but we don't allow for
that, and I think that
hurts the business. I think it just hurts, and
I can't find a rhyme or reason as to why we don't allow it.
And again, it's by order. It's not by ordinance.
It's by departmental order, and I'm just at a loss for that.
And it just seems like it would be helpful to allow our members to
work in these situations, because I think it would be a greater deterrent
than a security guard who has no arrest power,
who's merely just an agent of that business, when we
can have what I consider to be probably one of the best-trained, best-equipped
people operating on behalf of everybody, creating a safer
environment. That's how I look at it.
Well, we can talk about it further.
It is just
we do have to understand that that liability would then fall on the police
department.
I think the liability already exists if you're
working wherever you're working, because I've never seen a situation where it went
awry that the City of Chicago wasn't a named defendant in those particular
cases because those are our officers.
So if we're going to be, they say, "You're here for a penny, in for a pound,"
that if we're in, we're in. And I think if we need to be in, we need to be in 10
toes deep so that we can, I think, provide the best level of service.
Now, how we do that, now I understand that you don't want
officers in uniform at certain establishments without necessary agreements, but I
think that we could, I won't say compel people, but if that's the level of service
they want, that we could create an avenue for that to occur.
Similar to what we do with CTA, even though they're a sister agency, or even CHN
and other agencies. I think that's an avenue where our officers could
We can monitor and we can do things, and I think create a better product
for our citizens, because at the end of the day, when businesses close, when
things go awry, it hurts the community overall.
Well, Alderman, what I will tell you is that our officers
and the plans that we have around businesses right now, especially when we know
that those businesses need help, we're going to ensure
that
we have officers working in those locations.
One of the things that we've done is that we've beefed up foot patrol
around a lot of the businesses. Now, in certain communities, we
know that we have to have more of a focus
because of crowds gathering in front of certain businesses, things of that
nature.
When an officer is working alone
like that, that officer is going to need a radio.
That officer is going to need to call for backup if that is absolutely
necessary. So whatever happens in that establishment,
the Chicago Police Department now becomes responsible for what
happens in that establishment, because no one's going to go after the business
owner. They're going to go after the police department because they feel that's
where the money is. So we can have a discussion about this,
but we have to be very careful, especially when we're talking about
lawsuits and saving money on lawsuits because, and you're right,
people will go after police officers anyway.
But if this is a situation where inside of a
business, an officer in full uniform takes
action for that business, now the Chicago Police Department
can be held accountable for that. So we want to be very careful about that.
Okay.
Superintendent, if I could add on to that, Chairman.
Go ahead, Chief.
So obviously, downtown in the Central Control District, the First and
18th District, I believe there are 53 licenses that
close at 5:00 a.m.
49 of them are in the 18th District.
I think four of them are in the First District. We have over 41,000 hotel rooms.
And the idea has come up, we've had many discussions about how to do that.
One of the things that the superintendent did, which was a great idea, we expanded
our CERT teams to go to 10-hour days, 10-hour shifts,
which gave more officers into entertainment details.
Certain parts of the city, this and that, we've increased our entertainment
details to address this. I think during interesting times
when we had civil unrest, although we were trying to give radios to stores that
might experience the smash and grabs and everything.
But it came down to the officers working in these facilities, what kind of call
number do you give them? Who's responding?
And the safety for our number one assets, for the men and women working out there
by themselves in these establishments, working till
5:00 in the morning and just being outnumbered at that time without a support
unit following up or overlapping.
So it became a safety issue about putting officers there.
I know a lot of our licensed downtown are
restaurants with incidental liquor license, which officers are allowed, I believe,
to work off duty at the restaurants because they have an incidental liquor
license.
But just the safety issue to leave our men and women alone in these facilities
would be a daunting task.
Okay.
Scott Speers, general counsel. Rule 16 of the
rules of the Chicago Police Department prohibit an
officer from entering a tavern or bar while on duty or in
uniform, except in the performance of police duty.
So if we're talking secondary employment, that's not their police duty.
If
they're entering the tavern or the bar because they're responding to a call for
service, then they're permitted to be in uniform.
Division of Bureau of Counterterrorism.
I can also add, Alderman, I understand exactly what you're saying, and we've had
these conversations, as Chief Hein mentioned, with many different people.
Like for instance, your Lollapalooza that occurs in Texas,
the police departments work it off duty with their uniforms,
exactly what you're talking about.
They pay that unit because it
wouldn't be any different than our movie detail.
So our officers work the movie detail in uniform, but they're paid by the
cinematic agencies. So it'd be the same thing.
You'd have to have a unit like CTA, too.
When we work CTA off duty, we're in uniform-
Right
... we're allowed to do that. But that's an agreement with CTA.
There's a whole, like you said, litigation where if something happens and the
officer uses use of force, et cetera, what governs that? What are we under?
Are we under Chicago Police Department's rules because we're wearing the uniform?
Are we under CTA's rules, et cetera? So all that has to be worked out.
So just to put an officer in uniform at a local business, like let's say Macy's,
we'd have to be in agreement with them and
it'd almost have to be like you'd have to go to all the organizations downtown,
like John was mentioning, and have an agreement with them where we'd have a
specialized unit that would work off duty and we'd be wearing our uniforms,
but then they would be reimbursed from those companies and those companies would
hold the insurance retainer over us.
I
totally understand and know we would have to put parameters in
place and line stuff up. But I do think long-term, it
may be of a benefit to the city, to the
businesses, and even to the officers,
for them to be able to do that. And
everything's on the table. It's not you're moonlighting or you're doing something
that you may have no business doing.
And I think putting it on the table, I think, would be helpful
for everybody, to be perfectly honest with you.
The final question is around
the
death of officers.
In the last few years, we have seen a number of officers
who have been killed in the line of duty.
And there seems to be a level of commonality that
many of them were fairly new on the job.
Is there something that
I want to say it's not missing, but are we
looking at these situations to potentially see what may have
led to the circumstances? Because it's just
unique that a lot of these officers, I think
the longest amount on the job may have been five years.
Is there something different
that is potentially attributing to this?
I
want to know if we need to better equip people, or how do we deal with that?
Or has anyone even studied that commonality between these last five
police officers?
Well, there are
a few things there.
Number one, we have a very young department now.
Our department,
probably if you averaged out the numbers, it would probably be around 12 years.
But what I will tell you,
the uptick in violence against the police,
this is the thing that I don't think
many people are paying attention to.
Our officers,
since 2020, have been fired upon over 330 times.
38 police officers have been shot over that time.
We've seen an increase in physical attacks on
officers since 2020.
People have gotten very comfortable and brazen when it comes to fighting with the
police. Last year, during Mexican Independence Day, we had an
officer who was struck in the head
with a board. Split. Almost lost his entire ear.
And we see this on a regular basis. We just had multiple
officers, three officers, who were attacked inside of a funeral home,
where a fight broke out, and these officers had
concussions. What we're seeing is
a level of brazenness
and aggression toward officers
that has gone a little unchecked at this point, and I think
because
we're not looking at what happens
to the officers.
When we look at the officer
in one of our shootings,
was shot in the wrist.
Bullet was probably pretty close because his hands were up pretty close to his
head. And six inches one way,
this officer could've been dead, too.
But nobody talks about those things.
If we're not
taking seriously what is happening to our officers, we
are not taking seriously about the violence that's happening to
members of our community. So
yes, we know they were young, but I'm not going to say that because
they were young and they weren't necessarily
experienced is why they ended up being shot.
If you look at this last shooting, a
switch,
and if you hear the rapid fire of that weapon, there was no way to escape that.
Here's a person who was willing to kill the person he was in a car with
to shoot this officer.
Ariana Preston.
As heroic as she was, there was no way she was going to combat a
switch.
Where she was
heading home after a day's work
and was going to be robbed.
And because
they wanted money for a barbecue, they took this young woman's life.
This problem is not just a police problem.
This is a problem for society, because when we have someone
that's that violent,
willing to take
life that easily and not think twice about it, that is
a person who should not be walking our streets.
That is a person who should be behind bars and should be staying there because
they've proven to you who they are and what they're willing
to do. So if we're going to keep everybody
in this city safe, we have to start taking
violence against police officers
seriously.
On our end, we're doing everything that we're supposed to do at this point
right now to reform our department. We're going to continue to do that.
But
there are things that I push back on because we're not going to do that at
the risk of the lives of our officers.
We have to be very careful about how we do this, and this is why we all
need to have these conversations and talk about what's important.
Because once an officer is afraid to make a
decision in the field,
that hesitation to make a decision could cost that
officer his or her life.
And we don't need our officers hesitating
when they know they need to take action.
I said something before,
excessive repetition.
As a police officer, I give you an order, a lawful order to do
something.
If I tell you that over and over and over again, there comes a
point where you stop believing that I'm going to do something about it.
And now
they turn the tables, and now the officer becomes the
victim
of an attack. So we have to be very careful
about how we frame things,
how we tell the public things. There needs to be an education to the public around
what these officers are facing and what it means to make a split-second decision.
What those officers are facing at that moment.
And then
speak about the totality of circumstances and understand
that we cannot get into the mind of the officer at the
time that that officer made the decision
to use force.
We need to know what the officer was thinking at that time, what they reasonably
believe, and why they applied a level of force that they did.
So until we start having these open conversations about
this, there's always going to be a little confusion.
And that's an excellent question, Chair, and I'm glad you brought it up.
Well, on that note, I think that's a
good point for us to
hold up on. Alderman Lopez, you would kick over a good pail of
milk, man. I just-- Go ahead.
Hey, you wanted to know the name.
Actually, Superintendent, can you provide us by district, through
the Chair, the locations of where those 330 shootings
happened against officers, and where the 38 officers were shot, in which districts?
I'm sure we can find that information.
Thank you.
As superintendent said, we know you all have a tough job.
It's the work that nobody else does.
As has often been said,
you
go to places that people run from. So again, we know that's a challenging
job. I
personally know the challenges that you all face.
I've seen
many things in my life. I
watched my father serve the city for over 30 years.
And I know that it's a tough job, and I know it's tougher now than it
was then.
Again, we want to make sure that you all are equipped with the
tools that you need, the resources that you
must have in order to keep each and every one of us safe
within the confines that we work under.
I know everyone thinks that things are infinite, but as we know now,
things are finite. So we
want to make sure we're doing right by our officers, supporting them where
they need support, and also be accountable to
the citizens of the city of Chicago.
I know it's been said you all are doing
good work. We know that the numbers are down on
violence. Numbers are down
in most of our major categories. We know that's attributable to the
leadership of you and the members sitting in the box and the
various members of the department, from the superintendent's office down to
the guy walking the beat. So we appreciate the work that you all continue to do.
I
am now stretched in five districts.
I'm in districts 1, 10, 11,
12,
and 15. We've got great people on the West Side
working on behalf of the citizens, and we appreciate everything that
is happening. So with that being said, I am
going to excuse you guys. However, we may be recalling
you once we get amendments done and make sure everybody's on the same page.
Today is Friday. The time is now 6:23.
We will reconvene on Tuesday at 10:00
AM.
Go ahead. What you got?
Okay. All right.
Committee will remain at ease until 10:00 AM on Tuesday.