Weis: Fewer Cops Will Be On Streets
CHICAGO (WBBM) - Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis is confirming that, despite the hiring of new police officers in the coming year, the city will end up with fewer on the streets.
The city plans to hire 200 officers in the coming year, but the department expects 300 officers to retire. That's actually fewer than the average in recent years, which has been about 450.
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Either way, it would leave the department with more than 1,000 vacancies. Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22) seeks to put a non-binding referendum question on the February ballot that would ask voters if the department should be allowed to fill all vacancies that currently exist.
Weis said Chicago is far from the only city grappling with the problem.
"These are very challenging times across the United States," he said. "I've just come back from the International Association of Chief of Police (meeting) and major city chiefs and there's not a department in the United States, at least at the major city chiefs' level, that are fully staffed, and that's unfortunate."
Weis said that if the city can find a way to fund those positions and hire those officers, he would gladly accept them. But he said he doesn't see a way, and said the department will again try to be more "creative" in the way it deploys officers in order to keep a lid on crime with fewer officers.
