Rahm Asks McCarthy for $190 Million Cut to Police Budget

AP Photo/Paul Beaty

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told the Sun-Times Tuesday that Mayor Emanuel asked him to trim the police department’s budget by $190 million, a cut of nearly 15 percent.

The department could save almost half of that ($93 million) by eliminating vacancies, a move blasted by the head of Chicago’s police union as “Enron-style accounting.” Emanuel said the decision whether or not to eliminate the 1,400 police vacancies will be made by Oct. 15, when the mayor unveils his budget.

Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police told WBEZ the department is already short on staff, despite Emanuel’s campaign promise to put 1,000 more cops on the streets. The mayor’s office has shifted 750 officers doing desk work to beat patrol duty so far.

Emanuel vowed earlier this year that he would not fire cops to help close the city's budget gap. Chicago has about 13,500 budgeted officer positions, of which a little more than 11,000 are currently filled.

The police department accounts for about one-third of the city’s corporate budget. But cuts have long been politically thorny in a city struggling with street violence. Four teens were shot in Woodlawn Wednesday, hours before the mayor arrived there to talk about neighborhood revitalization, ABC 7 reported.

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By Chris Bentley in News on September 1, 2011 11:40 AM

Comments [rss]

JimmyJoe716

Taffer,

The issues with the vacancies is that the city is not replacing policemen as they retire. For example, in 2010 there were 200 retirees and the city only hired 20 police recruits therefore reducing the overall manpower within the department (these aren't exact figures, only an example). This has been going on for at least 5 years. The city has budgeted for 13,000 police officers and there are currently only about 7,500 active police officers currently on the job.

The question is, what is the city doing with all that money that they have budgeted for police?

Tafter

Can someone explain the vacancies issue to me?

Navin_Johnson

McCarthy looks like he had a run in with Walt Frazier and Keith Hernandez.

BlueFairlane

Hey, at least he stays in the game.

Navin_Johnson

His beard was weird, and It's like they say: "No play for Mr. Gray!"

JimmyJoe716

Here's another idea for Mr McCarthy. Why not eliminate some of the redundant supervisor positions that exist in city departments? There are way too many bosses in the police department, all making over $100,000 WITH take home cars! Surely these cars and all the gas that they consume would add up to a substantial savings for the city.

tomdarch

Here's a crazy idea: The city pays out millions every year in legal fees and settlement costs for police misconduct. It's been tough to improve the situation because the officers and their union "look out for each other." OK, fine. How about the officers themselves and their union pay for the legal costs and settlement costs for all those misconduct cases instead of the city/taxpayers?

I'm sure that at this very moment, there are a few good officers looking across the donut shop table at a fellow officer and thinking "this guy is gonna kill or beat the wrong person sometime soon. He really shouldn't be out on the streets with a gun and a badge." Under the current system, that officer will keep his thoughts to him/herself, and when the "bad apple" finally does something tragic, once the initial police cover-up is blown, the city pays his legal fees and 2.7 million of us chip in to cover the millions of dollars for the settlement. If the police paid those costs themselves, and the officer looking across the table at the "bad apple" was thinking "holy crap, this *@#@*% is going to cost me thousands of dollars!" then the police might just police themselves better.

I guess the downside to my modest proposal is that it would motivate the police to cover up ("oh, we forgot to breathalize the officer for a few hours"), destroy evidence ("hand over the security camera tape. I was never here!") and intimidate witnesses ("you was serving the officer water in them shotglasses, right?") in police misconduct cases even more.