Do you think police should be involved in responding to mental health crises?

We believe very strongly that we need to expand our public safety system to include mental health care workers, and guarantee we have the proper professionals with the right tools available to respond to homelessness and drug-related calls. If the call is for a nonviolent mental health crisis, we believe that mental health care workers should respond without armed officers.

If there is a potentially violent or volatile mental health crisis, we would call for a CARE team — which includes a mental health worker, paramedic, and police officer — to respond. We will advocate to expand this CARE pilot program, because right now the hours are extremely limited and insufficient, only answering crisis calls between 10:30am and 4pm on weekdays. We work closely and have been endorsed by many of the progressive grassroots organizations and alderpeople working to create this reform in Chicago, and it is something we are committed to as well.

Do you think the city should hire more officers?

Based on the information we currently have, we don’t think so. We have looked at the data and there is no long-term correlation between the number of police officers and the amount of crime in a neighborhood. For instance, in 2017, when the 19th Police District had higher numbers of officers, there were about 500 reported armed robberies; but in 2022, when there were fewer 19th District officers, there were fewer than 400 reported armed robberies. Conversely, carjackings were much higher in 2022 than they were in 2017 (or any recent year).  While we know the number of overall officers in the 19th District is down, we would ask the department to provide information on where officers are being deployed. Currently, communities are not given that information and we do not know how those decisions are being made by the department. We need to ensure that there are not sworn officers doing the job that a civilian could perform. We also need to make sure we are expanding what falls under the public safety umbrella to include other trained professionals, like mental health care workers.  

At the same time, the CPD consent decree, the federal court order mandating significant reforms to CPD, calls for a consistent set of officers per beat under a consistent supervising officer. We want to ensure the staffing levels are sufficient to meet these important reforms. 

We also know that police officers alone cannot make for safer neighborhoods. Chicago has one of the highest officer-to-citizen ratios compared to other major cities. And for too long, we have asked officers to respond to public safety issues that often fall outside their training and are not targeted toward long-term solutions. We want to build up other pillars of our public safety system to take some of the pressure off of officers.  In the long run, we need to invest in creating strong, healthy, vibrant neighborhoods with access to mental health services, job opportunities, housing, and other necessities.

Do you think the Chicago Police Department is adequately funded?

We simply don’t have enough answers from the police department. We are committed to ensuring that the consent decree is fully implemented and we know that will take significant investment. We want to see police dollars going towards these initiatives, and we will work to understand what is needed to make sure that we can fully and more quickly implement the measures of the consent decree.