UPDATE: Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel named Garry McCarthy, the police chief of Newark, N.J., as the next superintendent of the Chicago Police Department Monday.
“I’m going to be reaching out to everybody in the Chicago Police Department and everybody in the community to find out what is we need to do and ideas on how we can accomplish our mission,” McCarthy said at a press conference announcing his selection. More details soon.
Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel is set to announce this week one of his most important appointments: his choice for superintendent of police. And on the Far South Side, along a struggling stretch of the city known as “The Wild Hundreds,’’ Diane Latiker and her neighbors hope he gets it right.
“Lives are at stake,’’ said Latiker, who for years has turned her living room into a neighborhood youth center, a shelter from the storm of gangs and guns that helped earn the area its nickname.
The police board has delivered three names to Emanuel, chosen from among a field of 40 candidates vying to replace the departed Jody Weis: Assistant Deputy Supt. Debra Kirby, chief of patrol Eugene Williams and Newark, N.J. police chief Garry McCarthy, who was a finalist for the job in 2003.
Emanuel is expected to pick from the board’s list and he said Friday that he’s “happy with my choices.”
The selection of the city’s top crime fighter is a decision fraught with politics. A pick from within the department might please the rank and file, which has mumbled unhappily for three years under Weis, a career FBI agent from Philadelphia brought in by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008 to shake up the department after a string of videotaped beatings and other highly publicized infractions. Weis promptly ousted some popular department leaders and irritated rank-and-file cops simply by wearing a Chicago Police uniform–considered by many a privilege afforded only to those who have served more than desk duty.
“I think one of the worst things Emanuel could do is to bring in another outsider,’’ said Pat Hill, executive director of the African American Police League and a police officer for 21 years before retiring in 2007. “Morale is at an all-time low.’’
But Robert T. Starks, a political science professor at Northeastern Illinois University, said going outside the department might help restore the public’s fragile faith in law enforcement.
“People, especially in the African-American community, don’t really trust policemen,’’ he said. “I think that’s a real serious problem the next superintendent has to address, which means he has to attack the issue of police brutality. Frankly, an outsider might be better able to do that better, someone who has not had those political ties. That’s a disaster for the African-American community to have someone who is tied to the machine, someone who is tied to protecting the status quo.”
Crime across the city has gone down in recent years, including in neighborhoods such as Roseland. In Roseland, Chicago police reported 1,135 violent crimes in 2009, the last year for which complete data is available. That was down nearly 12 percent from a recent high of 1,285 in 2006.
Roseland’s homicide rate–24.6 homicides per 100,000 residents–was considerably higher than the city average. The city’s total of 461 homicides in 2009 translated to a rate of 16 homicides per 100,000 residents.
Chicago’s homicide rate makes this city one of the most violent in the nation. Its 2009 rate was twice that of Los Angeles and nearly three times the homicide rate in New York city. Among American big cities, only Detroit fared worse, at more than double Chicago’s homicide rate.
Even so, Chicago’s homicide rate dipped in 2010, and the 435 homicides was the lowest rate since 1965.
“Chicago has had a pretty substantial decline in crime since it peaked in 1991,” said Wesley Skogan, a criminologist at Northwestern University. “But in the end, our crime rate is really quite high compared with other big cities.”
Still, even in the face of a declining overall crime rate, Roseland residents complain about a sense of unease and a fear of ending up as a statistic in some future CPD report of street crime.
It is in tough neighborhoods such as Roseland, Woodlawn and North Lawndale, places haunted by poverty and unemployment, where the new superintendent could make a substantial impact. In the Wild Hundreds, Latiker and her Roseland neighbors–from merchants to ministers to college students to ex-gang members–have some firm ideas about the kind of superintendent Emanuel should select.
They say the next police chief must develop a serious community policing program that gets police officers out of their cars and onto the sidewalks, stores and parks of their neighborhoods. Currently, Latiker said, police ride through the streets “like an occupying army with their Dog the Bounty Hunter faces on.’’
“We need someone who really cares about the community and will treat the community with respect,’’ she said. “I mean every community across the city. Not everyone who lives in a poor neighborhood is a criminal.’’
Latiker said she does not have a favorite among the finalists, nor does it matter to her whether the next superintendent comes from within the department. Her personal preference: “It’s time for a woman police chief.’’
Latiker has been fighting crime in Roseland and West Pullman on her own for years, using love and compassion as weapons. “Give a thug a hug,’’ she says. She turned her living room into a neighborhood youth center on South Michigan Avenue called “Kids Off the Block,” or KOB, then moved operations into a nearby storefront.
Gregg Hampton, 22, has been going to KOB since he was 15. He said the most important issue the new superintendent must confront is teen violence.
“What I really mean is teen safety,’’ he said. “There are a lot of youth afraid to go to school.’’
Hampton said many teenagers in Roseland drop out of school because they fear being attacked on their way there and not because they don’t want to learn “and better themselves.’’
“Standing on the bus stop at 6:30 in the morning can be dangerous,’’ he said, noting that young people often arm themselves with guns for protection. “It’s live or die,’’ he said. “You can’t wait on the police.’’
Hampton is studying business administration at a suburban community college and wants to someday open a string of small businesses and hire people from the neighborhood.
“You can’t always blame the police for all of the problems,’’ he said. “If you’re not taught right and wrong early on in the home, it’s too late by the time you get to be a teenager. But if people had anything to turn to – jobs, after-school activities – I guarantee there would be less, less, less violence. I want to give them something to turn to.’’
Hampton said the next superintendent will have a hard time getting young people to trust the police. “They harass youth 24/7, especially in the summer,’’ he said.
He said police need better training in community relations. “You don’t approach every situation as if you’re in danger,’’ he said. “Just because some kids are standing around on a corner, the police shouldn’t assume they’re causing trouble. The police put you on the ground first and ask questions later.’’
Everywhere he goes in the city, Tio Hardiman, director of CeaseFire Illinois, a violence prevention group, said he hears the same complaints from inner-city residents.
“You’ve got a police state in some parts of Chicago and other parts freedom states,’’ he said. “We need a police chief who understands that law enforcement alone can’t remedy all the issues of crime in Chicago. We need a chief who thinks outside the box.’’
Rev. Gregory Livingston, pastor of Mission of Faith Baptist Church in Roseland, said the most important task facing the next superintendent will be “reaching out to the youth.’’
He said there should be more after school and recreational programs such as Midnight Basketball Leagues and “the police have to be there so the youth can feel safe.’’
Livingston said that when he worked as a minister on the West Side, gangs started betting on youth basketball games. The inevitable followed: “Kids were throwing games because the gangs told them to.’’
“We need an insider, someone who understands those uniquely Chicago dynamics,’’ Livingston said. “The summer is about to hit. We need someone who can step right in. We don’t have time for a honeymoon or a learning curve.’’
Ald. Anthony Beale, whose Ninth Ward includes Roseland, said he doesn’t care where the superintendent comes from. What he wants to see most in a superintendent is a commitment to put more police officers in high-crime areas.
“If we’re going to make the entire city safer, we need to put the resources where they’re most needed,’’ Beale said.
The alderman said former superintendent Weis supported police reallocation, but ran out of time to fully implement the policy before his contract expired amidst criticism from all mayoral candidates as the recent campaign wound down.
The idea remains controversial. When Beale championed a targeted crime-fighting program as chairman of the City Council’s police and fire committee, Daley quietly replaced him as committee chairman in January with Ald. Michelle Harris (8th Ward), who is not as enthusiastic about shifting police resources from low-crime to high-crime areas.
Dennis Rosenbaum, a criminologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that given the right leadership, “places like Chicago have the right stuff to put it all together at the top.’’
“We need a balanced approach that involves aggressive crime fighting but also community building and recognizing that 90-plus percent of what the police do in their jobs does not involve violent crime,” he said. “Most of it involves disorder and peacekeeping. It’s important that we do those things well and see those as part of the police function.’’
On a gloomy afternoon in West Pullman, Ed Sweis stood outside his small grocery store and watched two police officers search a van they had pulled over.
“It gets crazy out here,’’ he said. “There’s a lot of crime. But the police go by stereotypes too much. They stop everybody just by the way they look. That causes resentment. I’d say most of the time they’re grabbing the wrong guy.’’
Still, Sweis said, life on the block is getting better, less dangerous. The guys who used to hang out on the corners have been chased off.
“Crime is more organized now,’’ he said. “It’s away from the public.’’
If the new superintendent stopped in his store, Sweis said, he would ask him for one thing: “more cops on the street.’’
A flood of blue is also what Barbara Robinzine and Laura Green, co-managers of Rainbow Kids, a clothing store near 112th Street and South Michigan Avenue, said they also want to see.
“People don’t even feel safe letting their kids go out and play,’’ Robinzine said. “As far as I can tell, the police focus on giving people parking tickets, not protection.’’
Eli Hughley, 25, a security guard who works in Roseland, said he is lucky to be alive.
“I used to be one of the guys in the streets, selling drugs,’’ he said. “Then I got shot a couple of years ago. I felt like God gave me a second chance and I took it.’’
He said the new superintendent must teach his officers how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad.
“I’ve been stopped more now than when I was out in the street,’’ he said. “Tell the chief Eli said you need cops out here who know the community. Otherwise, nothing is going to change.’’
Juan-Pablo Velez contributed reporting
Photos by Nathan Weber:
Charts by Juan-Pablo Velez:
Source: Chicago Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation.