Despite the Chicago Police Department’s reputation as a national disgrace of police corruption and brutality, the Chicago city government has decided to bring on about a thousand new officers.
As national protest continues over the killing of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, one would hope that the infamous Chicago PD would make a shift towards reform. Yet, with this move, it continues to throw salt on the wound.
In a press conference announcing the new hirings, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson made sure to thank Mayor Rahm Emanuel, saying, “Because of his strong support, we’re going to get all the things that we ask for.”
Considering that police brutality and misconduct have cost the city half a billion dollars over the past ten years, Mayor Emanuel might want to have the police at least ask nicely first.
In truth, only 200 out of the 1,000 new hires consists of detectives, who are the people actively investigating murderers and drug dealers, while 516 of the new hires will be street cops, who will actively oppress and extort the black citizens of Chicago on a whim.
Little has been said if the training of these officers will embrace reform, or if the training process will be expedited to get more cops onto the streets quickly.
In April, an investigation by the Justice Department found that the Chicago PD exhibited persistent racism in its practices. Of the more than 400 people shot by police between 2008 and 2015, three-fourths were black, although only a third of Chicago’s population is black.
Black Chicagoans were also overrepresented in street and traffic stops.
Nothing in the Chicago PD’s past suggests that dramatically increasing the size of its forces would reverse this trend, reduce violence or improve the relationship between the police and the people they are supposed to be protecting.
Rarely in history do we see an increase in the size of an occupying force improve the climate of an occupation. There are countless military examples.
Just ask President Obama, whose increase in the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan deepened the war and empowered anti-imperialist elements of the Afghan population.
Similar to the Afghan War, these new hirings will require large amounts of weapons and technology, which will be happily provided to the Chicago PD by defense contractors, as well as security and surveillance firms.
Though we might want to dream that the department will not abuse this technology, no one should be so dangerously unassuming.
The Chicago PD has also not placed a figure on how much it will cost to train, arm and pay these new officers. Even without a succinct price tag, it’s obvious that such an increase in the police’s forces will not come cheap.
It truly is a shame to imagine how much good could come out of diverting even a fraction of these funds to Chicago Public Schools or community programs. The economic and institutional racism within Chicago goes back decades, and if the city of Chicago lacks a serious plan to address these internal problems directly, nothing will improve in the city.
Black Lives Matter’s fierce statement on these develops perhaps says it all: “The causes of crime and intra-communal violence exist because of the conditions of poverty that Rahm Emanuel has exacerbated for Chicago. What more policing will accomplish is more violence, more lock ups and more trauma for our already suffering communities.”
