Mayoral Challengers Question Emanuel's Crime Record
(CBS) -- Several mayoral candidates criticized Mayor Emanuel's record on crime while Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says crime is moving in the right direction.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports whether or not Chicagoans are, or should feel, safer depends on who or which statistics you believe.
McCarthy says the city is on track to have the fewest murders since 1965. He spoke just hours after Mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia blasted the mayor for failing to halt the epidemic of violence.
Garcia says there were "Over 10,000 shootings over a four-year period."
Podcast
Murders are down to a 50-year low, but shootings are up 12 percent from last year.
"There are certain pockets of the city where there are pretty severe gang conflicts that are still brewing. We haven't changed the gang culture," McCarthy said.
McCarthy said, basically, that any claim that police crime figures are being cooked is "nonsense."
Garcia accuses Mayor Emanuel of breaking his campaign promise to add a thousand new officers.
"The officers that are being used through overtime are not necessarily officers that are highly motivated," Garcia said. "Often times they have already worked a full day."
"A fully loaded officer with health benefits and everything else is more expensive than an officer being paid overtime to do the same thing," McCarthy said.
Candidate Willie Wilson, said it was a matter of reassigning existing officers,
"We will take 75 percent of the police in cars and put them riding the bus, the subway, walking up and down the street," Wilson said.
Wilson also proposed adding officers to check on officers.
"We will set up a private police force that will report directly to the mayor, which is myself, that's independent of the whole police department," Wilson said.
To make sure what happened in Ferguson and New York doesn't happen here.
"Police can turn a protest into a riot in a heartbeat and that's what you've seen us not do here in Chicago," McCarthy said.
