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Leaders from Chicago’s first-responder agencies on Friday sought to reassure city residents and visitors that plans are in place to ensure public safety during the historically violent summer months.
“The (police) department has a comprehensive summer safety plan that addresses all concerns that we’re seeing across the city, from the central business district to the beaches to the violence we experience in the neighborhoods,” Brian McDermott, Chicago Police Department chief of patrol, said at a news conference at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications in the West Loop.
Jose Tirado, the interim executive director of OEMC and a former chief in the CPD, told reporters the city had activated its “Summer Operations Center” to better coordinate efforts among various city departments.
“Since January, OEMC has held multiple planning meetings on events happening this summer, attended by city departments including the Chicago Police Department and the Chicago Fire Department, to ensure we have plans in place to manage the additional crowds and increased traffic in large events to ensure the safety of residents and visitors,” Tirado said.
Tirado’s predecessor at OEMC, Rich Guidice, was recently selected to be chief of staff to Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson.
The announcement came a few weeks after hundreds of young people descended on the downtown area as part of a “teen takeover” organized on social media. Many of the youths got into fights, obstructed traffic and destroyed property.
Two teen boys were shot near the Chicago Cultural Center, and police arrested more than a dozen people.
The announcement comes days before Johnson is set to be sworn in as mayor and the same week Johnson named a new interim police superintendent, Fred Waller, a former CPD chief.
The chaos in the center of the city last month was seen in some corners as raising the stakes for the mayor-elect, who was not endorsed by the city’s largest police union and whose response to the situation included suggesting it was kids making “silly decisions.”
For the last decade, large youth gatherings in the downtown area have proved difficult to manage, befuddling two mayors and three CPD superintendents. The recent events downtown only brought renewed criticism of the city’s response to violence.
Police sources previously told the Tribune that several high-ranking CPD officials who are typically responsible for the downtown area were not available to work on April 15, when the youth gathering occurred in the Loop.
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A curfew was imposed at Millennium Park after a teen boy was shot and killed near The Bean last summer. Meanwhile, strategies to handle the youth meet-ups are among the criteria being used to grade candidates for the CPD superintendent job.
The summer season typically brings an annual uptick in gun violence, felt most acutely in a handful of neighborhoods on the South and West sides.
McDermott said Friday that CPD will continue its tier-deployment strategy, in which patrol district officers are temporarily reassigned to other parts of the city where violent crime is most active.
Police typically cancel officers’ days off around the Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekends in a further effort to tamp down shootings. McDermott said each of the department’s five police areas has an individualized plan to address specific needs in the warm-weather months.
Through late April, the number of murders and nonfatal shootings are both down 9%, according to CPD data.
The Police Department’s response drew some criticism last month as well, particularly among aldermen whose wards were affected. That appeared to continue Friday.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, tweeted Friday after the news conference that “it would be nice if they shared the ‘comprehensive plan’ with City Council.”
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