Good luck in Chicago getting the police to show up if you are shot, stabbed, a victim of domestic violence, or any number of other serious crimes.
Wirepoints notes There is a 50/50 chance there’ll be no police to respond to your 911 call.
In Chicago in 2023, more than 1,800 calls were made to 911 of a person being shot. Only about 800 – fewer than half – were responded to immediately by police officers. The other 1,000 callers were victims of 911 backlogs, where no police were available at the time of the call. Those victims had to wait half an hour, an hour, or even several hours for the 911 call backlog to end and for police to finally arrive.
It was the same for the 32,000 911 calls of an assault in progress, where police were only immediately available for 50% of those calls. And it was the same for 54% of the city’s 911 calls of 35,000 batteries in progress.
In all, there were 783,000 high-priority 911 calls in 2023. For 437,000 of those calls, or 56%, long periods of backlogs meant there were no police immediately available. Wirepoints obtained the 911 call and response data directly from the Chicago Police Department via FOIA.
The fact that it’s essentially a 50/50 chance as to whether officers show up promptly for a violent crime should be horrifying to the residents of Chicago. In part, sources tell us it’s an operational and logistics problem. It’s also a staffing problem – the number of beat cops in the city are down nearly 20% compared to 2019. Police are also forced to increasingly focus on consent decree compliance and bureaucratic paperwork, insiders tell us, which keeps officers off the street. But most of all it’s a problem of city leadership that’s made Chicago’s policing and criminal justice system dysfunctional. With violent crimes at its highest point since 2019, a lack of police response is but one of the many problems keeping Chicagoans unsafe.
2024 to Date
So far in 2024, 127,000 of the 256,000 high-priority 911 calls made in Chicago had no police available to immediately respond. That’s a “no police available” rate of 50%.
Case Story
NBC Chicago reports Chicago Mom Waits Hours for Police Response After Wicker Park Break-In.
A Chicago mom is raising questions about the police response after two men broke into her Wicker Park home, with four hours elapsing before officers arrived after her 911 call.
She says she left her door open at approximately 12:30 p.m. after letting her dog out, and that’s when two men entered the home.
“I saw two men wearing masks standing inside my house,” She said. “I screamed – ‘I am calling the police’ and they bolted.”
Then, she says she called 911. “They told me dispatch was on the way and wait outside,” she said. She called 911 multiple times, and on the sixth call, she asked for a supervisor.
“ A gentleman got on and said sorry to say we have no units to send you…then there was an awkward pause,” she said. “He also recommended I call my alderman and I said why- and he said encourage him to hire more police. The dispatcher also asked me if I would consider defending myself …if I had a weapon or considered getting one.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Has the Solution
Don’t worry. Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson will fix the problem by hiking property taxes to give money to the Teachers’ Union.
And instead of going anything about crime, Johnson Seeks Slave Reparations.
Mayor Johnson’s “Reparations” gambit is nothing but a political ploy to put his critics on the defensive, and to regain support in the Black community that feels the Mayor’s migrant policies have left them behind.
While the Mayor “apologizes on behalf of Chicago for historic wrongs committed against Blacks in Chicago”, who is he apologizing for? Does it include the half of all Chicagoans who were not born in the city or the two thirds of Chicagoans who are either immigrants or the child, grandchild or great grandchild of immigrants.
It is clear that he is not apologizing for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) leadership, which since 2010 has systematically degraded a school system that is overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and poor through a series of strikes and work stoppages. Including forcing the district to close campuses for 78 weeks and denying poor families private and public-school alternatives to their often-failing neighborhood schools. This has had devastating consequences not only academically but also on youth health and safety.
He is not apologizing for his defund the police supporters, who have been responsible for a reduction of almost 1,700 police positions. This resulted in not enough officers to respond to half the 911 calls and not enough detectives to clear almost 95% of violent crime cases. This has particularly devastated the Black community who constitute 80% of murder victims and Black women who constitute a shocking 30% of all violent crime victims.
There is little in the Mayor’s budget or policies that indicate he is going to move beyond his racist rhetoric and actually address the needs of the Black community. From policies on public safety, Chicago Public Schools, migrants, and handling businesses, Johnson has followed through on what he said he would do.
He eliminated an additional 833 police vacancies in the budget, guaranteeing the city always have almost will has 1,500 fewer officers than when Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office. This will make it difficult to improve police response times that has seen over 50% “high priority” 911 calls not having a car available IB 2023, up from 19% in 2019 and arrests rates for violent crimes plummeting to less than 5%.
Johnson staked out his vision for K-12 education long before he ran for mayor, declaring he was “against the structure” of education and decrying homework, standardized tests, school accountability, school choice, and selective-enrollment schools. This, despite the fact that Teachers Union leadership, including himself have sent their own children to private and magnet schools and almost 40% of Chicago Teachers send their children to private schools.
As a union leader and lobbyist, he supported the capping of both the number and enrollment of public charter schools. As Mayor his appointed school board issued a resolution calling for a “transition away from privatization” and selective enrollment high performing magnet schools which will deny poor Black families their only alternatives to underperforming and often failing and under-enrolled neighborhood schools.
The Mayor’s migrant policies will come at the expense of the Black community. Migrants have dominated the Mayor’s administration as the Mayor continues to support Chicago’s sanctuary city policy that openly invites migrants, promising not to cooperate with the federal government on enforcing illegal migration while providing unprecedented handouts to new arrivals seeking asylum. This includes emergency shelter and housing; medical assessments and treatment; legal services; job-readiness support; benefits for victims of serious crimes; enrollment in public schools, among other things.
More Blacks have left Chicago than any other city as over 265,000 Black residents exited from 2000 to 2020, mostly middle-income families with school-age children.
While the Mayor chooses to use the race card as the oversimplified catch all answer for all that ails Chicago and Chicago’s Black community, we’d be better served by thoughtful, practical policy responses.
I sure hope that after reading the above that you have come to the same logical conclusion that I have. Slave reparations will fix everything. /sarcasm
Chicago has an amazing propensity to keep electing mayors worse than the last one. Brandon is the worst Chicago mayor ever.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot was a tough act to follow, but Brandon succeeded.
Congrats! It’s not easy being the worst ever in Chicago.