Daley Tries to Combat Perception of Rising Crime

Crime isn’t just a public safety problem for Chicagoans. It’s also become a serious political problem for Mayor Richard M. Daley.

“I think all of us are tired of it,” the mayor said at a press conference on the West Side Tuesday morning. Daley was trying to explain that he’s weary of hearing news about violence in the city. But he also looked and sounded exasperated at the publicity generated by each new round of shootings.

“I think one crime is one too many,” he said, then added with a mumble, “That’s what the theory is.”

The mayor called the press conference so he could detail all that his administration is doing to fight crime—and to highlight police department statistics showing that violent crime numbers are actually on the decline. A day earlier Police Superintendent Jody Weis held a press conference to make the same point. The mayor typically blames violence on access to guns, and he did so again today.

“London, they don’t have as many guns but they’ve got more people,” Daley said. “Same with Hong Kong.” He promised to continue to fight for tougher state and federal gun laws.

In a novel twist, Daley also claimed credit for drafting a new ordinance allowing the legal registration of handguns in Chicago, even though he didn’t do so until after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively ended the city’s handgun ban.

“I understand some Chicagoans want to be able to keep guns in the home, and I listened to them,” he said.

But Daley also moved away from gun control, emphasizing that the causes of violence are “many.” He insisted that the city is attacking them with a number of initiatives, such as moving police officers from administrative duties to street patrols, conducting data analysis to help police brass determine where to mobilize cops, using federal funds to fix up vacant homes and return them to use so they’re not crime magnets, and working closely with the offices of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who both stood with Daley at the event.

Few of the initiatives were new—the foreclosure program, for instance, has been underway since 2008, and Dart admitted, “The mayor and I have talked about these things for years.”

But Weis said it was important for the officials to highlight their “success stories.” He said the police department’s data-based deployment strategies are bearing fruit, noting that crime numbers have dropped for 19 straight months. He blamed perceptions of rising crime on “the 24-hour news cycle.”

“Now I would never say people should be satisfied,” Weis said. “Do we have a lot further to go? Absolutely.”

When pressed, Daley was similarly reluctant to say that crime was under control, or even that the city was safer now than 20 years ago, when the murder count was nearly twice what it has been in recent years.

“I couldn’t say that,” Daley said, “because you’ll go out here and interview someone who’s just been shot.”