Emanuel, McCarthy Deploy 150 More Chicago Cops To Streets
UPDATED 06/13/11 6:55 a.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- 150 extra Chicago Police officers will be ready to patrol city neighborhoods by the end of the coming week. That promise came today from Mayor Emanuel and the new Police Superintendent.
As CBS 2's Mike Parker reports, during his campaign, Rahm Emanuel pledged to put 1,000 more police officers on the streets of Chicago. Within days of taking office, 500 officers had been reassigned to beat duty. On Sunday, he said 150 more cops are now being added to neighborhoods across the city.
In neighborhoods like Logan Square, Morgan Park and the Near North Side, there will be still more cops redeployed from desk and administrative jobs by this coming Friday.
Emanuel declared, "These officers are going to be the backbone of our police department working on the beat."
Police Superintendent McCarthy said the officers will be assigned to "areas that we thought were critical, that we could make an impact pretty quickly."
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After the announcement in Logan Square, the mayor plunged into the crowd at a farmer's market, and heard an avalanche of "thank you"s from attendees.
"I think it's a good message, I think we need to change business," said resident Theresa Buffo. "I think there's always a fear (of crime) in Chicago. Its block by block, but mostly, sure."
Superintendent McCarthy wants to see results from the reassignments and says he'll be holding district commanders responsible for those results.
Shakespeare District Commander Linda Flores is in charge of police activities in the Logan Square neighborhood. Of those dozen or so new cops she'll be getting, she said "There's a lot of different things that I have in mind… my mind is rolling with what I'm going to do with them."
She wouldn't talk in detail about her plans for the additional officers. She smiled and said, "The bad guys will never know."
The move to add officers to the streets comes in the wake of a rash of mob attacks in the city, including several in busy and touristy areas such as the Gold Coast and Streeterville.
The rash of violence began on June 4, two men were attacked in Streeterville. Three teens have been charged in the attacks against the men, one of whom was parking his scooter in the 300 block of East Chicago Avenue, the other of whom was assaulted while riding his bicycle at Lake Shore Drive and Huron Street.
<a href="http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/06/10/3-teens-charged-in-mob-attack-near-mag-mile/"Three days later, a group of teens attacked two other teenagers at the Oak Street Beach, and beat the victims violently after a chase to Chicago and Wabash avenues. Three teens have been charged in the incident.
On Wednesday afternoon, a man was attacked and robbed on the CTA Brown Line near the Chicago Avenue/Franklin Street stop. He was hospitalized and lost his wallet and iPhone.
On Wednesday evening, a woman was attacked and robbed at the Sheridan Road CTA Red Line 'L' stop, while carrying her 2-year-old daughter. Two suspects pushed the woman and her daughter down a flight of stairs.
Early Thursday morning, Jesse Andersen, the brother of Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, was attacked on the CTA Red Line as he went to work. One of the suspects, a female, took Andersen's iPod and when he tried to grab it back from her, he was "blocked" by other suspects and then punched in the mouth, authorities said.
Two attacks have also occurred on the city's Near West Side, one of them on a CTA bus. Both the victims in those cases were University of Illinois at Chicago students.
