Preckwinkle Slams Emanuel's Crime-Fighting Strategy

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Dec 6, 2012 11:20PM

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle criticized Mayor Rahm Emanuel's and Chicago Police Superintendant Garry McCarthy's handling of the city's problem with increasing violence, saying, his strategy is to "just arrest everybody.” During a Q&A Thursday she said the violence problems come from "a miserable education system that has failed many of our children."

Preckwinkle said her comments were "a critique of all of us, it wasn’t aimed at the mayor.” She has long been a supporter of reducing prison populations and reforming drug laws, saying drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal issue. She also once said Ronald Reagan deserved a "special place in hell" for the war on drugs. She also proposed a "violence tax" on the sale of guns and bullets earlier this year, although she later dropped it.

The Tribune writes:

“Clearly, this mayor and this police chief have decided the way in which they are going to deal with the terrible violence that faces our community is just arrest everybody,” Preckwinkle said. “I don’t think in the long term that’s going to be successful.

“We’re going to have to figure out how to have interventions that are more comprehensive than just police interventions in the communities where we have the highest rates of crime. And they’re almost all in African-American and Latino communities.”

...

“We have contented ourselves with a miserable education system that has failed many of our children,” Preckwinkle said, saying more after-school enrichment and job-training programs are needed. “I’m talking about the kids who don’t graduate, let alone the kids who graduate don’t get a very good education, even with a high school diploma.”

A spokeswoman for the mayor's office defended Emanuel's tactics saying, “Mayor Emanuel strenuously agrees that a holistic approach is necessary to successfully address crime.” She touted the mayor's education and community policing programs, but said, "let's make no mistake, criminals deserve to be arrested."