Homicides, shootings double; some believe police passive
chicago » Homicides and shootings have doubled in Chicago so far this year compared with the same period in 2015, and police have seized fewer illegal guns — more possible signals that officers have become less aggressive in the aftermath of a shooting video released last fall.
Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante on Tuesday said hewas so concerned about officers possibly holding back that he filmed a video for the entire department in which he encouraged them to do their jobs and assured them that a federal probe of the force wasnot aimed at individuals.
“We are aware that there is a concern among the rank and file about not wanting to be the nextYouTube video that goes viral,” Escalante said in the video before introducing a segment of his own to remind viewers “why we took this job and swore this oath of office.”
The statistics comealmost exactly three months after the city, on the orders of a judge, released the video of Officer Jason Van Dyke firing 16 shots at Laquan McDonald, a black teen killed in 2014. Since that day, Van Dyke has been charged with murder, and Superintendent Garry McCarthy has been fired. The Department of Justice launched a civil rights probe of the police force, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel has sought to regain public trust in the department and his own leadership.
The crime figures offer a stark reminder that the nation’s third- largest city is nowhere near shedding its reputation for frequent street violence. The vast majority of the bloodshed is happening in neighborhoods on the south and west sides, away from the Loop business district.
In the first two months of the year, authorities recorded 95 homicides, compared with 48 for the same period last year. Thus far, there have been 406 shootings, or more than twice asmany as the 180 reported in the same two- month period in 2015.
TheMcDonald case raised concerns that officers, fearful of attracting negative attention, may be pulling back and becoming more passive. Quietly, officers say they are not going to take chances thatmight land them in legal trouble or threaten their jobs and pensions.
“I’m hearing that police are standing down because they’re afraid what might happen to them, that when they get a call, they wait to see if someone answers it first,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a prominentRoman Catholic priest and activist on the South Side. “I get really angry about that. If they are not going to do police work, they need to get out.”
Evidence of a pullback starts with an 80 percent decrease in the number of street stops that the officers have made since the first of the year. Escalante said he believes that decrease is largely tied to the fact that since the first of the year, officers have been required to fill out far lengthier forms than the brief “contact cards” they used to use.
Officers’ unwillingness to make as many stops as they once did might also explain the steep decline in gun seizures.