The blue glow of police lights has become a constant fixture in downtown Chicago, where cops working overtime have been assigned to act as a crime deterrent simply by sitting in their cars.
Police Supt. Larry Snelling now plans to pull those cars out of the area on Thursday and suspend the overarching Strategic Deployment Initiative that was launched by his predecessor David Brown.
The goal was to “curb public violence incidents throughout the city” by reacting to crime trends and placing cops on “high-visibility patrols,” according to the police department’s latest annual report .
But in an interview, Snelling raised alarms about the overtime spending and framed the strategy as toothless.
“When we’re putting overtime out there and there’s an overtime initiative, we want to make sure that we’re getting the most effective work from our officers with these overtime initiatives,” he said. “I don’t believe in the scarecrow policing, where it’s just serving as a deterrent.
“I want to make sure that any officer who’s working and sitting in a vehicle is engaging with the public and making sure that our citizens feel safe.”
After vowing to rein in overtime spending after he was confirmed last September, Snelling said the move gives commanders and deputy chiefs more leeway to decide “the best way” to use that money.
But with the Democratic National Convention looming and just $100 million budgeted for overtime, managing that pool of cash will likely prove difficult.
Downtown violence raises alarms again
Suspending the overtime initiative serves as the latest rebuke of Brown’s leadership, which came under heavy fire as crime spiked during the pandemic. Snelling has also disbanded a controversial citywide unit and ended the so-called tiered deployments that relied in part on cancelling cops’ days off and sending them to unfamiliar police districts.
The Strategic Deployment Initiative was launched in February 2022, just months after Chicago ended its deadliest year in a quarter-century . The downtown area, which includes some of the city’s safest neighborhoods historically, wasn’t spared by the violence and saw a huge rise in shootings that year.
Even after the additional police resources were added, officers struggled to get a handle on the so-called teen trends that brought large groups of young people downtown and sometimes devolved into violence.
In recent weeks, a pair of high-profile shootings have reignited safety fears in the city’s economic and cultural hub.
Early on Jan. 8, a police officer and a would-be burglar were wounded in a shootout after a crash-and-grab crew tried to drive into the Prada store at 30 E. Oak St. Then on Friday afternoon, two students from Innovations High School were killed when gunmen jumped out of two vehicles and opened fire just blocks from Millennium Park.
Snelling said he has “a new strategy in place” to combat crime downtown, though he didn’t provide details. Instead, he touted “a huge reduction” in key crime categories across the city this year.
Michael Edwards, president and CEO of the Chicago Loop Alliance, said his group supports the decision to suspend the initiative, noting that officers patrolling the retail corridors on foot are “effective in overseeing safety and security in the Loop.”
“As the dynamics of retail corridors change, so do their needs, and visitors, workers, and residents look forward to an attractive downtown that ensures a safe and memorable experience.” he added in a statement.
Police leaders ‘make the best use of what we have’
Earlier in his tenure, Snelling disbanded a citywide unit created amid unrest in 2020 that grew to 872 officers under Brown’s watch.
That unit, the Community Safety Team, remains at the center of a whistleblower lawsuit by a police lieutenant who alleges that members of the team were required to meet an illegal quota for traffic stops. Officers Ella French and Carlos Yanez, both members of the team, were wounded in a shooting during a traffic stop that left French dead.
Despite reporting that such stops rarely result in gun arrests and disproportionately target people of color, the department’s focus apparently hasn’t shifted.
In November, when the unit was disbanded, then-Patrol Chief Brian McDermott sent a memo explaining that the remnants of the Community Safety Team functioning in the city’s five police areas “will now be called the Priority Response Teams.”
An email to the Area One Priority Response Team in November instructed members they were required “to conduct two traffic missions during their tour of duty.” Records of deployments for all five Priority Response Teams show that traffic missions accounted for more than one-third of their activity between Dec. 4 and Jan. 4.
Snelling said housing those teams in police areas allows the department to offer the “best training” and makes the officers more nimble. But with the ranks depleted, he acknowledged police leaders have to “make the best use of what we have.”
“The plan here is to make sure that these officers are in places where they’re familiar with, where they know the players,” he said. “And that the command staff … will have more control over where these officers are.”