Chicago budget sparks policing concerns

The proposed Chicago Police Department budget for next year is more than $2.2 billion. But there are questions about how many officers are going to be on the street, as well as how the city plans to stop burglaries, kind of like the ones we just saw in Lincoln Park. Brett Boganski is live in The Loop. And, Brett, it seems like there's some conflict over next year's police strategy. And there's questions about the directions of the Chicago Police Department, especially after we heard that Mayor Brandon Johnson is proposing eliminating 132 sworn Chicago police officer positions, but converting them into civilian positions. And this is coming at a time when the city needs more police officers, but the acting superintendent was defending that position, saying that the department is going to be focusing more on a community policing model. But he also, just keep this in mind, that the city does need more police officers, which is why he was talking about today about how the city is going to be doing a year-round police academy to try to fill some of those positions here. So we were talking about the acting superintendent, Fred Wilder. He said this is going to be moving things around. It's going to be more efficiently, and that way it's going to allow more police officers to go back on patrol and hit those areas that they really need. But there's certainly questions now and even before this meeting started today about how many more police officers Chicago needs to have adequate staffing levels here. Waller didn't have an answer when he got asked this question about the exact number the city needs, but he said they're constantly evaluating the resources. Alderman Brendan Riley quoted the department's own workforce allocation study that says Chicago needs 661 more sworn police officers than it has today. Another concern Riley brought up was the number of officers retiring this year and next year. Chicago Police Administration confirmed There are 363 retirements year to date. And by the end of this year, they anticipate that number to go up to 382. And as of today, 222 officers put in for retirement for next year. So budgeted vacancies are the room the department needs to hire. How does eliminating 132 budgeted officer positions help you reach the study's targets? We're constantly reviewing what we need. And it's not easy. Recruitment is always a challenge right now for how many officers we actually need. When I was chief of patrol, I think we had about 14,000 officers somewhere in that number, give or take maybe 1,000 or so. So we've lost a lot, and the recruitment is challenging throughout the country. And this is really important because those questions about the number of officers on patrol is hitting home for places like Lincoln Park, as we were just talking about, especially after we reported 13 burglaries Tuesday morning with those businesses off of Clark Street. You've seen the surveillance video right here on Fox Chicago that shows some people wearing masks, breaking glass doors and getting away with hundreds of dollars. But the main thing, they're accused of causing thousands of dollars in property damage. Alderman Timothy Knutson said his ward needs more police officers on patrol. and what happened on Tuesday is just another example. He also said there have been times where officers will be around Wrigley Field at night, but then his ward can't get one patrol car to go into the northern part of his ward. Chief of the Detective Bureau, Kevin Bruno, explained how challenging it is to catch people who committed these crimes like what we saw on Tuesday because they happen after hours. There are not many witnesses, and the people who are committing these crimes are wearing masks. And he was saying that they're driving stolen cars. But he did explain why there is hope for the near future. With the decrease in robberies, we are now able to have the capacity to shift into other spree type incidents. And that's what we're doing right now. So we are taking that same approach to these burglaries. So it's gonna be tech based, it's gonna be very analytical. We're gonna have teams looking at each incident, which is gonna help us decide where to deploy resources. And then we're gonna build those investigations through video, through through license plate readers, through cell phone data, all of that to track down, identify, and disrupt these burglary crews. We also heard from Chicago police that they're trying to get a hold on overtime, saying they've cut down on it. But I checked the dashboard on overtime. They've already spent around $227 million on overtime. That is down from last year. It was $286 million. But certainly, they're spending way too much money on overtime. We're live in the loop tonight. Brett Boganski, Fox Chicago.