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Study that will help adjust where Chicago police officers are deployed finally in the works
A study which will help the Chicago Police Department determine which city neighborhoods see additions or subtractions in officer deployment is at last in development.
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After years of fits and starts, a study which will help the Chicago Police Department determine which neighborhoods see additions or subtractions in officer deployment is at last in development.
The study has been a political hot potato for years, and city leaders will soon face the question of how to distribute the departmentâs limited number of police officers in an effective way that satisfies the cityâs array of constituencies â and legal obligations.
The workforce allocation study wonât be finished until yearâs end. But of CPDâs roughly 11,000 sworn police officers, more than half are assigned to the departmentâs 22 patrol districts and are potentially subject to movement.
Little in city government can be more controversial than where officers are stationed, and any significant shifting is likely to bring an outcry.
Ald. Marty Quinn, 13th, said his constituents have for years been forced to stomach slow response times for emergencies as the districtâs beat cops are often overloaded with calls. Quinn noted that the resident population in the Chicago Lawn District in his ward is far higher than that of the neighboring Englewood District.
Like the Harrison District on the West Side, the Englewood District has for years remained one of the most violent in the city. CPD has 339 patrol officers assigned to Englewood, according to OIG. That equates to 656 officers per 100,000 residents â by far the highest number within any patrol district.
âIn certain areas of the city, you could make an argument theyâre overpoliced, and in my area weâre underpoliced drastically,â Quinn told the Tribune. âThere is a question of fairness on allocation.â
âHow is that fair to taxpayers that one district is prioritized with officers versus a neighboring one?â Quinn added.
Tough choicesCPD has for years been the second-largest municipal police department in the United States, and Chicago has the second-highest number of police officers per 100,000 residents of any city in the country.
The results of the study â and the accompanying staffing model â will, ostensibly, help the department more efficiently distribute sworn officers, while also affording cops greater consistency in their work schedules, assignments and supervisors.
âThe answer that many workforce allocation studies say â they usually say â is, âYou need more police,ââ Tim Daly, director of Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Program at the Joyce Foundation, one of the studyâs funders, told the Chicago Police Board in November.
âAnd thatâs where I think it could lead to some tough decisions,â Daly added.
The study â mandated by the ongoing federal consent decree â has remained an elusive target for the Police Department. Last year, Superintendent Larry Snelling blamed âred tapeâ for the repeated delays in producing it.
The University of Chicago Crime Lab completed a similar analysis in 2021 that showed deployment levels decline during the weekend overnight time periods when shootings are most common. However, a year later, former police Superintendent David Brown called the study lacking. He announced plans to seek his own officer deployment evaluation â plans that never came together before he left his post in March 2023.
Now it appears things are finally moving, and CPDâs community policing objectives are at the heart of the study. The contractor â California-based Matrix Consulting Group â will also identify areas âwhere increased civilianizationâ may âaid in efficiency.â
âHow the CPD chooses to allocate its resources and workforce truly matters. It can facilitate effective policing and reform efforts or hinder them,â Maggie Hickey, head of the independent monitoring group that assesses the cityâs consent decree compliance, said during a status hearing earlier this month.
âIn our reports, we have consistently expressed concerns about key (CPD) units being under resourced,â Hickey said, âand we hope that the results of this study will help the city and CPD realign its resources to meet the requirements of the consent decree and to meet the needs of Chicagoâs communities.â
Declining number of copsPolice departments across the country have faced staffing challenges in recent years amid high-profile examples of fatal police misconduct and shifting mindsets about criminal justice at large. Chicago has been no exception.
Data from the cityâs Office of Inspector General show CPD has about 11,600 sworn officers as of December 2024. Of those, more than 6,300 are assigned to the cityâs 22 patrol districts.
Staffing levels vary by district. The Lincoln District (20th) on the North Side, typically the cityâs quietest and safest, has 243 officers, the fewest of any patrol district. The Englewood (7th) and Harrison (11th) districts on the South and West sides have 339 and 346 officers, respectively, data show.
Five years ago, in December 2019, CPD boasted nearly 13,200 sworn members, with more than 7,800 officers assigned to patrol districts, according to OIG.
As the departmentâs ranks have thinned, department leaders have often been forced to cancel copsâ scheduled off days and temporarily reassign them elsewhere, especially during the summer when violence typically spikes and the cityâs social calendar is in full swing.
During his November presentation to the Police Board, Daly cautioned that there will likely not be a windfall of new cops.
âThere are a lot of folks who are very comfortable with the number of officers, perhaps, they have in their community,â Daly said. âAnd what this study will say, we think very clearly, through the evidence and the materials it pulls together, is, âWell, actually, we probably need to allocate them in these ways, given our fiscal realities.ââ
Late last year, around the time that Matrix was selected as the study vendor, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability issued a report on CPDâs budget that highlighted the studyâs urgency.
âThe Department needs to do a better job placing officers in the right places and at the right times. It also needs to keep them there long enough and provide time in their schedules to build strong working relationships with people in the neighborhoods they serve,â the report said.
âThe Commission has heard concerns about slow response times in neighborhoods across the city, and especially in Black and Brown neighborhoods on the South and West sides,â the report stated. âWhile the Department participates in a workforce allocation study during 2025, it must take additional steps to improve response times with existing data and tools. Slow response times weaken trust and confidence in the Police Department and put health and safety at great risk.â
Changing the map?Beyond staffing, CPD may also alter the boundaries of the 22 patrol districts as a result of the workforce allocation study.
âWe need to make sure that we are effectively utilizing our manpower,â Superintendent Snelling said during a community meeting in December. â(The workforce allocation study is) also going to help us look at district mapping, the size of districts, how quickly our officers are getting to jobs, how our officers are responding and how we can (decrease) response times.â
Altering district boundaries â something not done in decades â is top of mind in the Chicago Lawn (8th) District, which covers most of the Southwest Side from Pershing Road south to 87th Street, from Harlem Avenue east to Western Avenue. The district, especially on the west side of Midway Airport, is home to scores of CPD officers and other municipal employees.
Local leaders have made a recent push to split the Chicago Lawn District into two, with Central Park Avenue being the new boundary.
With about a quarter-million residents, the Chicago Lawn District, served by Ald. Quinn, has nearly five times the population as the Englewood District, according to data from the cityâs OIG. However, calls to 911 for emergency services are far more common in Englewood, highlighting the challenges in how to allocate officers.
There were about 92,000 calls for service within the Chicago Lawn District in 2024, records show, equating to roughly 36,000 calls per 100,000 residents.
About 52,000 calls for service were made in the Englewood District last year â a nearly 1:1 resident-to-911-call ratio. Violent crime in the Englewood District has for decades outpaced the Chicago Lawn District and most other patrol districts.
Darryl Smith, a neighborhood violence interrupter and community activist in Englewood, said the neighborhood and district need all the police officers they can get.
âI think, overall, throughout the city, we need more officers â no oneâs oversaturated with officers,â Smith told the Tribune. âBut the amount of officers that we need (in the Englewood District), we donât need any taken away. Crime is still rampant over there, just like in the 8th District, itâs bad.â
Smith noted, too, that the Englewood District is often the first assignment for new officers after they graduate the CPD training academy.
âEnglewood is also a training district, so we get a lot of new officers coming from the academy, so thatâs probably why it seems like we have more officers,â Smith said. âWe donât have more experienced officers, and thatâs whatâs needed.â
Originally Published: January 31, 2025 at 11:32 AM CST
