Despite Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s highly promoted efforts at concentrating additional police patrols in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, many crime-ridden police districts still have fewer officers patrolling their streets than far safer areas of the city have, according to recent data obtained by The Chicago News Cooperative.
The data included officer-assignment data for all 9,400 Chicago police officers, as well as almost 1,000 detectives — information that the city has steadfastly declined to make public.
The analysis found that the distribution of patrol officers among the city’s 25 police districts does not correlate to the places where crime rates are highest.
But as stated here and elsewhere, the real problem is actually no manpower:
Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday warned that financially strained police forces around the country likely will shrink for the first time in the quarter century in which statistics have been tallied.
Holder said that by the end of this year, 12,000 police officers and sheriff's deputies probably will lose their jobs amid government budget shortfalls and cuts in a sluggish economy, citing a new Justice Department report.
"The findings included in this new report show that law enforcement agencies nationwide have nearly 30,000 unfilled vacancies," he said in prepared remarks to U.S. police chiefs.
- The number of law enforcement officers who were killed nationwide has jumped nearly 17 percent.
Newly released statistics from the FBI show that 56 officers were murdered in the line of duty last year. That is a jump from 48 in the previous year.