Online Petition Aims to Halt Wood Street Police Station Closing

By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 17, 2011 7:40PM

When Mayor Emanuel announced the closing of three police stations in his budget proposal last week, we knew at least one of them wouldn't be shuttered without some form of hand-wringing from residents. We thought of the three, however, closing the 19th District at Belmont and Western would be the one to generate the most complaints.

Instead, it's the 13th District at 937 N. Wood that's generating the most scrutiny and an online petition to get the mayor and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to change their minds.

"(R)emoving this station would diminish safety in our neighborhood by removing guaranteed police presence," the petition reads. "Also, by removing the station, the decision on where police officers should patrol in the 13th District will be left to the mercy of bureaucrats and administrators who know and care little of our neighborhood."

That last quote can be debated ad nauseam. The opponents of closing down the Wood Street police station say that point out the nearest police station is more than two miles away. The brand new Town Hall police station has placed the Belmont station, once a symbol of the Police Department's modernity, on the closure list and more than two miles separate that. Closing the Prairie Station, at 300 E. 29th St., could be felt from Bronzeville and IIT all the way to Hyde Park, even though Police Department headquarters is at 35th and Michigan.

It could be easy to dismiss the concerns of residents of District 13 as yet another case of NIMBY, but these are the tough decisions the Emanuel Administration is facing. The "Save the 13th" organizers are planning a protest of the Wood Street police station scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Ukrainian Cultural Center (2247 W. Chicago Ave.). It'll be interesting to see if Roscoe Village and South side residents organize in kind to halt the closures of their respective stations.