Chicago learns crime-fighting tips from New York

borhoods along with anger at police after the release in 2015 of a video showing a white police officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.

That lack of faith has had grave consequences in Chicago, where many people living in high-crime neighborhoods are reluctant to help police solve them. While the number of homicides surged to the highest in nearly two decades last year at 762, the percentage of those murders solved by police fell ten points to 26 percent, according to a University of Chicago Crime Lab study. In New York, police solve about 70 percent of homicides.

“We need them (witnesses) to come forward and give us the information so we can put these bad guys in jail,” Johnson said.

In one example of Chicago’s dilemma, the police department is struggling to draft a new policy on the use of force. An October proposal prompted concern from the police union that the restrictions were so tight officers would put themselves in danger to comply. A new draft released Tuesday would give police more latitude in deciding when to fire their weapons, which pleased the police union but prompted concern from community activists about excessive force.

All this is a sharp contrast with New York, where the NYPD during the 1990s turned to the “broken windows” policing strategy of cracking down on minor offenses championed by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. That policy helped drive the number of homicides down in one decade from more than 2,200 a year to fewer than 700.

Since then, the number of homicides in New York has continued to decline. In January the police department announced that there had been a near-record low 335 homicide in 2016 — less than half the tally in Chicago, which has less than half the population. And New York has done this with a lighter policing touch.

The NYPD has been making a targeted effort to repair damaged relationships with minority communities. Use of the “stop-and-frisk” tactic that disproportionally affected black and Hispanic men has plummeted in the past three years. Low-level possession of marijuana is now considered a ticketable offense, and overall arrests dropped 20 percent in 2016 from the year before.

Since his visit to New York, Johnson has begun applying what he learned about community policing with some encouraging results.

TERESA CRAWFORD/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson speaks with residents of Chicago. Johnson visited New York recently to learn how it has achieved success in fighting crime.