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Police Tue Nov 23 2010
On Police Redeployment
Progress Illinois provides your must-read for today heading into the early skirmishing stages of policy debate this election season:
This is a subject Chicago has long avoided; redeploying police officers away from safer to more dangerous areas is a political Rubix cube. Tax-paying residents of quiet blocks are skeptical about seeing resources taken from their neighborhoods, Dumke found. "I can see a car or two being pulled to help for a special event -- let's say if the Cubs win the World Series and they need some extra police over at Wrigley Field," Ald. Pat Levar, who represents the far Northwest Side's 45th Ward, said in the News Cooperative piece. "But our community pays taxes, and they deserve police protection, too." Northwest Side Ald. Margaret Laurino (39th Ward) expressed a similar sentiment.
Weis apparently sees things a bit differently. Some police districts, he told aldermen at the October 19 budget hearing, "have an additional number of police officers above and beyond what analysis has proven they actually need. So we can move some of those officers to a district where analysis has shown they need some more." Here he is describing his ideas for redeployment on a Fox Chicago news program about a month ago:
Go read the whole thing.
