Dem. Chicago Leader Plans To Make City Safer by Ending Racist Gang Database, Suspending Police Academy Construction
A prominent Chicago Democrat who is running to be mayor of the city has vowed to create a “safer Chicago” if elected, but the dubious policies she has espoused would quite possibly have the opposite effect if implemented.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has stated her intentions to halt construction on a new training academy for police officers and firefighters, completely dismantle a database of known and suspected gang members compiled over time by the police, and install a board of citizens to provide additional oversight and control on the city’s police force and criminal justice system.
Those policy actions are part of Preckwinkle’s plan called “Building a Safer Chicago,” but to the outside observer, it sounds like a recipe for disaster that would include fewer trained police officers on the streets, more criminals and gang members on the streets, and a further demoralized police force unsure of whether the city will have its back as it attempts to enforce the laws in a city already wracked by high crime rates.
The first proposal from Preckwinkle would freeze — pending “further review” — the planned construction of a new $95 million training academy facility for incoming police officers and firefighters. She credited protesting activists opposed to the new academy for helping to inform her decision.
Instead of building the new facility, Preckwinkle would instead focus resources on completely overhauling the way in which police officers are trained, in light of her belief that “our highest priority is curriculum and content, not buildings and amenities.” In other words, she’d rather spend more time and money re-training a diminished police force than hire and train more officers to bolster the under-manned force.
“When I was first elected as president of the county, we put a hold on our capital projects to look at how they relate to our priorities. We need to look at this,” Preckwinkle told the Sun-Times. “We need to improve training, but the question is, do we need a new facility to do that.”
As for her plan to dismantle the police department’s gang database that has been compiled over the years, the mayoral candidate seemed to imply that the database was racist in that it was largely comprised of “black and brown” minority individuals … even though it is indisputable common knowledge that the broader population of gang members across the country — and especially in Chicago — is indeed largely comprised of minorities.
Ironically, in speaking out against the gang database, Preckwinkle also seemed to echo a common complaint from conservatives and libertarians in opposition to the Democratic Party’s desire to use the federal government’s terrorist no-fly watchlist to prohibit firearm sales to certain people, in that she noted certain people could end up on the gang list without knowing how or why, and with no known recourse to be removed from the list.
Preckwinkle said of the gang database that there was “no criteria for how to get on it and many don’t know if they’re on it and there’s no way to get off of it.”
“It’s part of the culpability of the Police Department,” said Preckwinkle. “People don’t know how they got there and it’s used to damage their lives. That’s a real challenge to police-community relations.”
With regard to the “police-community relations” mentioned by Preckwinkle, she offered up two proposals that may sound good at first — and have the potential to possibly work, if done right — but in actuality would most likely serve only to make crime worse by causing the police to pull back and be less proactive in fighting crime.
One such proposal, modeled after a program in New York City, would create a Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice that would create task forces composed of local, state and federal law enforcement officials in conjunction with community leaders and “experts” who would be tasked with finding solutions to “public-safety issues” such as gun violence, criminal justice for juvenile offenders and destabilized neighborhoods.
Preckwinkle also wants to create a Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability — which had been initially proposed by the protesting activists — which would take the form of a seven-member civilian commission that would have authority over the Chicago Police Board, provide oversight and accountability of the police force and have a say in who could be appointed as police superintendent. Preckwinkle has already let it be known that she would replace the current Chicago Police Superintendent, Eddie Johnson, if elected.
The mayoral candidate has also announced that she would invest more in a community policing strategy that has become known as the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, and will implement the Obama-era consent decree on the Chicago Police Department, which would impose restrictions on the force and make changes to the training regimen for officers.
On top of all that, she has vowed to work with the state to help pass and impose stricter gun control laws, as if the state and city didn’t already have some of the toughest gun control laws already, with little impact on rising crime rates.
Crime is a major problem in Chicago, but rather than support the hiring and training of more officers and a crackdown on known and suspected criminals and gang members, this would-be mayor would hamstring the police department in the name of community relations and probably make the already dire situation in her city that much worse.
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