Black Lives Matter Urge 'No More Police' After Chicago Pledges To Hire 1K New Officers

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 22, 2016 8:07PM

Early this month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel confirmed reports that he was looking to hire hundreds of additional police officers to help quell violence in Chicago—now on pace for the worst year in over a decade. On Monday, Supt. Eddie Johnson made it official, announcing the Chicago Police Department's intention to hire nearly 1000 more policemen, including 516 officers and 200 detectives. Later that afternoon, Black Lives Matter, an activist organization that has been critical of expanded police force in the past, responded on Wednesday with an essay titled "No More Police!" In it, BLM argues that "more policing will not 'fix'"the underlying conditions that perpetuate violence.

In a post on Medium attributed to BLMChicago, the group criticized increased taxes "for even more policing." Questions about funding still exist, as recent property-tax and sewer hikes will likely go toward funding the existing pension crisis. (This Bloomberg article about "debt vs. death" is worth a look.) They also noted the cost of police misconduct settlements:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Police Department and City Council are incapable of solving the conditions that produce street crime in Chicago. Neither Emanuel, Johnson nor (Ald Roderick) Sawyer (who requested more officers) offer solutions that will benefit the people of Chicago, nor address the conditions that case the City’s rampant intracommunal violence. Instead they propose tax payers money go for even more policing, in a City which already has the most police per 100,000 people in the country. Chicago has spent over $100 million in police “misconduct” (ie. abuse/murder/rape) settlements in the last 2 years, and this will undoubtedly continue as police have not stopped killing people. This year alone, police killed 16 year old Pierre Loury, whose family still has not received the police report and most recently, 18 year old student, Paul O’Neal, both of whom were shot while running away from police.

Even as homicides and non-fatal shootings have risen, the concept of police divestment has gained more traction this year, as activists at the Freedom Square camp—across from the CPD's Homan Square "black site"—have furthered the idea, and groups like Mothers Against Senseless Killings have seen success with more community-focused monitoring, as profiled in the Chicago Reader.

The activist network argues that a host of underlying failures lie at the root of Chicago's violence, not the degree of CPD manpower:

The hiring of more police means the mayor and his administration have no plans to address the conditions of poverty, lack of affordable housing, food insecurity, underfunded schools, lack of access to healthcare and unemployment. This is a recipe for disaster and will result in more killings by police, more police torture and violence, more people entered into the prison system, and more intra-communal violence further distressing the people of Chicago.

In what could be the most important speech of his career, Emanuel on Thursday evening will address Chicago violence. He's expected to discuss the extra police hiring and talk about the expanded youth mentoring services. Beyond that, it remains to be seen if and how he plans to address the issue mentioned above.

"It's a complex set of problems that will be addressed in a very comprehensive way," Emanuel said last month. "Everything from police, to children, to what we have to do for their safety to guns, to making sure we're providing hope where there is despair."

How Emanuel chooses to fill in those gaps tonight may determine whether or not he'll ever be able to close the divide between his administration and portions of the community he serves.