Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday promised to put more police officers on the streets over the historically violent Memorial Day weekend but also asked for the community’s help.

“It’s going to take all of us not just the police, not just city government, to ensure that our communities can live and thrive in peace and safety,” Johnson said at the 63rd Street Beach surrounded by other department heads.

“However you decide to spend your holiday weekend in Chicago, your safety is my top priority,” he said.

Johnson said the city will activate its centralized emergency preparedness center, run by the Office of Emergency and Management and Communications, to coordinate responses to violence and bad weather.

Johnson did not say how many extra officers would be on the street, saying instead that the extra officers would cover large events and gatherings.

Interim Chicago Police Supt. Fred Waller said his department has a “comprehensive safety plan” for the weekend that includes putting more officers on public transit and in business areas as well as conducting bag checks at beaches and Millennium Park.

But that doesn’t mean resources will be moved at the expense of neighborhoods.

“We won’t neglect the neighborhoods just for downtown,” Waller said.

Sworn officers will have one day off canceled this weekend to help beef up staffing, Waller said. He said that was standard procedure for Memorial Day and other major holiday weekends and officers will receive overtime.

“We take the wellness of our officers seriously. And I want them to know that I appreciate them and the city appreciates him,” Waller said.

Those efforts will be in addition to the 30 state-funded “peacekeepers” wearing yellow vests this weekend to deescalate “hot spots” of violence and avoid a repeat of mid-April when a crowd of teens danced on cars in the Loop, leading to two people being shot and police making 15 arrests.

Mayors promise every year to increase officers on patrol, only to see their best efforts devolve into a bloodbath over the holiday weekend that marks the unofficial start of summer.

Last year’s Memorial Day weekend saw 51 people shot, nine of them fatally — the most violent holiday weekend in five years — despite increased police patrols and a focus on neighborhood programs.

Four years ago, in then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s first year in office, she said police would “flood the zone” with 1,200 additional officers for the holiday weekend. Lightfoot, in a show of interest in tackling violence, even rode along with a police squad car and responded to a shooting. After 72 hours, 41 people were shot, seven fatally — a more violent weekend than the year before.

That was the last time Lightfoot offered specifics about the extra deployment of officers for Memorial Day weekend.

But Johnson begins his term with a police department that has 1,700 fewer officers than when Lightfoot started. The department had about 2,000 vacant positions as of March.

Johnson has promised to confront the root causes of violence by pledging to make $1 billion worth of “investments in people.” Hours after Johnson’s inauguration last week, he filled the new position of deputy mayor for community safety with Garien Gatewood, director of the Illinois Justice Project.

Johnson created that position to replace the deputy mayor for public safety, which became a revolving door under Lightfoot. The idea, Johnson’s staff said, was to do away with a role that was a liaison role between the mayor and CPD and to create a new role to focus on aspects of crime prevention beyond the police department.

During her term, Lightfoot, too, tried to address the underlying causes of violence. In her first year, Lightfoot introduced a comprehensive anti-violence program called “Our City, Our Safety” that aimed to flood the city’s 15 most violent neighborhoods with investment and resources. That initiative was tied to private and public investments in housing and development in her Invest South/West program.