We don't doubt that there is a wholesale plan to redraw all the beat boundaries at some point in time. The question is when does Rahm pull the trigger? Uptown Update has a clue to the future. Maybe. We're going to post the whole thing:
- We received this from someone who wants to remain anonymous. We don't know how true it is. We trust this person has contacted the appropriate alderman about his/her concerns."I am a police supervisor who has been studying the department's proposal to consolidate police districts, specifically 19 and 23 come the first of the year. When that happens us Uptown residents will barely see a police car. Now, the 2 districts have a total of 18 beats. When consolidated, the new district will have only 15 beats, a loss of 3-6 officers per watch.
Uptown, now comprised of 3 police beats from 23, will become a single beat in the new district. This means a loss of 3 (on days) and 6 (afternoons and midnights) officers per day. And let's not even talk about the tactical teams who will now be working an area 3 times in geographic size.
All alderman should know, and the public too, that the mantra from the police brass that "buildings" don't police is a smoke and mirror job. The further a beat car is from its police station, the more downtime that car must have. Larger geographic districts increase response time. Imagine someone shot in Uptown. The beat car is down on an arrest and the nearest other beat car to respond is at Western and Irving. This WILL happen.
And please don't believe that ALL the police in 19 will be assigned to 23. If that happened, 23 would have the largest manpower contingent in the city - 400 some cops. That's more than in Englewood and Harrison, districts that lead the city in murders and violent crime. That will not happen. Trust me, if the consolidations go through, you will see a lot less cops on the streets.
Finally, our neighborhoods (Uptown, Buena Park, etc) built a brand new police station with a state of the art lock-up (jail) that has been CLOSED by the department. All prisoners from 23 go to Belmont & Western for processing. How senseless. And it is an increase in downtime for the officers who have to transport prisoners across a larger geographic area.
This will also occur on the near west side when 13 closes and the near south side when 21 closes. Closing a police station is a big mistake and all citizens should be complaining about it. And so should the aldermen. But they are not.
- A cop who Lives in Uptown too."
Prices for homes around the local Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks just started climbing.