CHICAGO — The Monday after making it into the Chicago mayoral runoff, Brandon Johnson stood in the heart of the Loop by hulking CTA “L” columns that gleamed with a coat of morning rainfall as sharply dressed commuters hustled down the staircase.
Questioned by a reporter about his public safety plan, the Cook County commissioner directed attention away from the lively scene downtown and toward his West Side neighborhood more than eight miles away.
“Just Wednesday night — the day after I was propelled into this moment — there were gunshots yet again right outside my front door,” Johnson said during the news conference. “I live it every single day in Austin.”
Johnson represents some of the city’s most violent neighborhoods and repeatedly discusses crime in personal terms. He talks about shielding his children from gunfire on his block that sometimes has pierced his home’s windows and a classmate of his oldest son who died in a shooting this school year. “I have more incentive than Paul Vallas for a safer, stronger Chicago,” he’s argues. “I’m living it, just like families are all over the city. We have to get it right.”
Vallas’ campaign stops include mentions of violence just as harrowing, albeit less personal.
At a December fundraiser inside a swanky lounge at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the Gold Coast, the former Chicago Public Schools CEO expressed outrage at the slaying of Kevin Davis, a 15-year-old boy shot the previous afternoon in front of his West Side high school.
“Why wasn’t that child in an afternoon school and extended day program?” Vallas said. “I’m running for that reason. … So that I can bring in the type of leadership across every department at all levels, at every level, who can get this city back on track.”
As the two candidates vying to become Chicago’s next mayor crisscross the city before the April 4 election, they are offering consistently contrasting views on myriad issues tied to public safety as Chicago residents grapple with elevated fears after crime began skyrocketing three years ago, including in areas that traditionally had been more isolated from violence.
The ongoing debate over law enforcement tactics and crime is not unique to Chicago and has occurred in other big cities such as New York, where retired police captain-turned-politician Eric Adams was elected mayor after campaigning on restoring public safety.
But there are problems specific to Chicago as well about how to improve safety here.
The next mayor will be tasked with implementing sweeping new Chicago Police Department strategies aimed at decreasing crime. Vallas has been critical of too many restrictions on police activity, particularly police chases, while Johnson is a longtime proponent of redirecting police resources to other services, though he has backed off that phrasing during the campaign.
Whoever is elected also will need to address police reform, including through the ongoing federal consent decree that is supposed to overhaul police policies and practices under the supervision of a federal judge as well as, in a few years, executing a new police contract that offers protections for cops.
In recent years, Illinois policymakers and public officials have argued policing alone can’t solve crime and pointed to the need for major spending in disinvested communities as a sustainable strategy. But some pro-police advocates say Chicago cops are demoralized and less proactive, helping to embolden criminals.
Also of note: Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown is leaving after nearly three years, giving the next mayor an opportunity to reshape the department from within.
Bob Boik, who served as chief of staff to police Superintendents Brown, Charlie Beck and Eddie Johnson, said the next mayor must focus on police reform as part of a broad crime-fighting initiative.
“Solving violent crime, achieving compliance with the consent decree and exhibiting leadership are all the same problem. You can’t look at those problems as distinct things that need to get done,” Boik said. “The truth of the matter is, and really what police reform is, is addressing all of those issues together as one. The best way to do that is building community trust and having that be the center of all things.”
Walter Katz, a criminal justice expert who works at the research and advocacy philanthropy organization Arnold Ventures and served as Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s deputy chief of staff for public safety, said “the question should be effective policing, not necessarily more policing.”
“This goes back to, well, how many officers does a city the size of Chicago need? Where are they, what are they doing? How active are they in patrol? How many officers are posted up just in one position, and that’s what they do for eight hours?” Katz said. “So I think these conversations probably should be much more nuanced than they tend to be, but I understand it’s a campaign.”
Katz also stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic had a “major impact” on crime across the U.S., and that arguments of spikes in shootings and homicides being solely an offshoot of the 2020 nationwide reckoning on police reform and racial justice aren’t grounded in evidence.
“Violent crime increased across the country,” Katz said. “It increased in cities which trimmed police budgets. It increased in cities which didn’t touch their police budgets. It increased in cities with protests and without protests. So there was absolutely something (that) changed in this country, which then drove to violence.”
Susan Lee, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s ex-deputy mayor for public safety who now works at the Chicago CRED anti-violence group, said it can’t be forgotten that the city has one of the highest ratios of police officers per resident in the nation, topping New York and Los Angeles, yet Chicago has more homicides than both those cities.
“What is it about the way we are deploying our workforce that is not leading to effective policing?” Lee said. “I have a hard time believing … that it’s just about hiring more officers. So I would hope that both whoever sits in the mayor’s office takes the time to really understand what workforce challenges the CPD system presents and how they’re going to solve that.”
Both Lee and Katz also shared a common refrain among policing experts when it comes to disinvested neighborhoods: “They are simultaneously over-policed and under-policed.”
“When something bad happens, they don’t hear the sirens, and police do not show up to help them deal with that crisis,” Lee said. “They also often see police harassing them. … There’s a basic safety equity gap in the city of Chicago, and so to emphasize just the aspect that police don’t show up versus emphasizing that police are showing up in the wrong way, I think you have to see both sides of that equation.”
Both Vallas and Johnson agree that police cannot solve the persistent dilemma of crime alone and that the government should also address “root causes” of violence by investing in social services and jobs. But the plans they have outlined thus far on what is within CPD’s purview illustrate their divergent philosophies on what tack should guide law enforcement.
Vallas’ proposals lean into what he has said is “proactive policing” and replenishing the department’s ranks, while Johnson’s espouse shifting emphasis from traditional crime-fighting strategies toward programs that try out new approaches.
Both candidates have promised to at least maintain funding for the police department at current levels — not a surprise from Vallas, who has run a saliently law-and-order campaign, sought and won the endorsement of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police and volunteered to help negotiate its latest contract that includes raises.
That is an evolution for Johnson, however, as in 2020 he had come out in support of the “defund the police” movement, which followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. The cause calls for diverting law enforcement spending and redirecting it for other uses, including social and mental health services.
That summer, Johnson spoke on a panel titled “We Don’t Call Police: A Town Hall on a Police-Free Future” where he praised organizers for pushing “an agenda that actually can transform people’s lives.”
“And part of it is removing ourselves away from this, you know, state-sponsored policing,” he said, “but also the tools that have been placed against Black folks that have been used violently, whether it’s policing, or administering standardized tests, or … around how white supremacy finds its way in every facet of our lives, that we have to fight and resist that.”
Since entering the mayor’s race, Johnson has distanced himself from that position and rhetoric, though he promised in a forum last fall not to increase the CPD budget. During a recent radio appearance on WVON-AM, he responded to questions about defunding police by saying: “With all due respect, I get how they are trying to paint a brother. I get it. But I’m not going to be subject to a hashtag that no one can define.”
Vallas has been criticized for receiving the FOP endorsement, but he’s said the backing from the police union will allow him to better reform the department because he’ll have buy-in from the rank-and-file.
Part of that reform will come as part of the federal consent decree, an order the FOP has repeatedly pushed back against. So far, the city has reached at least some level of compliance with 78% of provisions reviewed in the consent decree, but it only fully complied with about 5%.
Others question whether the FOP contract will be an impediment to reform. Boik said he thinks the labor agreement “is used as a scapegoat but I don’t see it as an impediment to providing solid leadership and building morale of officers, increasing officer wellness, providing best-in-class training for officers.”
“None of that is prohibited contractually,” Boik said. “I think it’s more about execution more than any sort of big bad wolf out there preventing the city from achieving change.”
On Chicago police staffing, Vallas has vowed to restore the total number of sworn members to the just-over 13,000 positions included in this year’s city budget. There are currently about 1,500 vacancies. His plan also includes increasing the number of detectives and supplementing detective work by bringing back retired officers he thinks will return in droves after he’s elected mayor.
He also said he would beef up the transit patrol unit on the Chicago Transit Authority to 300 cops, permit officers who exited the force in the past three years to return without losing seniority, “recalibrate” the background check process in order to screen out fewer applicants and establish a “Police Reserve Unit” of former Chicago police officers, who work for other city departments, to deal with short-term desk assignments.
Johnson, meanwhile, has not agreed to fill the sworn vacancies, stating that other candidates’ vows to do so are “empty promises” because it would be impossible to find enough recruits soon enough to make an immediate dent in the city’s violence. After joining the Chicago police academy, it takes about two years to become a full-fledged police officer.
“There are individuals that are saying that we need 1,000 more police officers, right? They called for that. They’re lying to us. You cannot find 1,000 people to do more (of) anything right now,” Johnson said the week before the Feb. 28 election. “I need public safety right now, like the rest of the city of Chicago wants.”
Instead, Johnson said he would promote current officers to increase the amount of detectives by 200 and eliminate $150 million in what he described as wasteful spending and funnel that money toward more effective resources within the police department. Positions within CPD he said would be reexamined include roles in public relations, administrative assistance, graphic design, photography and non-sergeant supervisory roles.
Johnson also has broken with Vallas when it comes to two community activist-backed initiatives that have been introduced to the Chicago City Council by progressive aldermen during the current term. They are the “Treatment Not Trauma” legislation, which would repurpose vacant police salaries to send social workers and medical specialists to nonviolent mental health crises calls, and the “Peace Book” ordinance, which would devote 2% of Chicago police’s budget to violence prevention initiatives not connected to law enforcement and incarceration.
In addition, Johnson has been a long-standing critic of the city’s ShotSpotter contract, which left-leaning aldermen have targeted following the fatal 2021 Chicago police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo that began when officers responded to an alert of gunfire from the system. Johnson has said he would end the use of ShotSpotter.
Vallas, meanwhile, has staunchly opposed a different change that went into effect after Toledo’s death: A policy launched last summer and supported by Lightfoot that requires officers to only engage in a foot pursuit if there “is a valid law enforcement need to detain the person” that outweighs the dangers of the chase.
Vallas also frequently admonishes progressive Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who also at times was criticized by Lightfoot over prosecuting decisions. He often campaigns about the city “bypassing” her jurisdiction by going to the U.S. attorney’s office for federal charges or directing the police department to press its own charges, which is within its power but would likely end with prosecutors dropping them shortly after.
Even more unproven is Vallas’ plan to establish a “Law Department Municipal Prosecution Unit” to try the city’s cases itself, which likely would require a change in state law. He also said he wants to enact a “Public Nuisance” ordinance to hold financially liable those involved in looting or other damage to property and violence.
Johnson said he would launch a new division within the CPD focused on missing persons cases, prioritize domestic violence survivors in public housing waitlists, abolish the gang database and work with the state to make “trauma recovery centers.” He said he would prop up a new “Office of Community Safety” to coordinate with the mayor’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention as well as back a sweeping revision to the police department’s search warrant policy that has languished in the City Council.
Christened the “Anjanette Young Ordinance” as a nod to the Black social worker who was forced to stand naked in her home as several Chicago officers in 2019 executed a search warrant at the wrong location, the legislation is opposed by Lightfoot, who has said it was not grounded in the reality of policing. Young has endorsed Johnson for mayor.
The latest proposed version would add a provision that mandates officers seeking warrants to first conduct at least a week of surveillance on the location. It includes a ban on no-knock warrants except in the case of “exigent circumstances,” such as someone facing imminent physical harm.
While attempting to position himself as a centrist rather than a right-winger, Vallas has made other moves. He repeatedly criticized Lightfoot for not firing an officer who Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said should be terminated because of false statements about his associations with the Proud Boys hate group.
The officer received a suspension from the Police Department, which Lightfoot defended as an appropriate punishment in that case.
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