Chicago’s teachers’ union and other progressive groups celebrated Brandon Johnson’s victory as mayor, but the city’s police force is apprehensive about his approach to policing.
It was a close campaign between Cook County Commissioner Paul Vallas, a moderate Democrat supported by Chicago’s Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police, and Cook County Commissioner Johnson, who was backed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Johnson had to justify his support for “defunding” the police during the course of his campaign.
After Receiving Criticism For Her Handling Of The City’s Rising Crime Rate,
Lori Lightfoot Became The First Incumbent Mayor In 40 Years To Lose Reelection.
According to the Chicago Police Department, in 2021 there were more than 800 killings in the city, marking a 25-year high. Even while the number dropped to 695 in 2018, it was still considerably greater than in 2019 when Lightfoot assumed office.
Robberies and carjackings are just two examples of the rise in crime that has been observed in recent years.
Last week, he predicted that, “if this guy gets in, we’ll see an exodus like we’ve never seen before.” This prediction was published in The New York Times. Cataranza has been emailed by Newsweek and asked for comment.
Johnson has stated that he has no intention of reducing the number of police officers in the city, but has acknowledged that the existing policing approach is ineffective. He promised to keep police funding steady and to “make sure we have smart police.”
He has claimed that rather than spending more on police and prisons to make streets safer, the money would be better spent on mental health services, classroom supplies, and low-cost housing.
He’s also in favor of having non-military personnel like social workers and EMTs answer some 911 calls instead of police officers.
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“Mass Departure”
The police union warned in a March 28 Facebook post that 2,900 policemen with at least 20 years of service or who are above the age of 50 would leave the force if Johnson were elected.
The union said that many of the department’s officers were only staying because they had “high hopes” for the department’s future. There will be a mass departure of people who refuse to work for an even more anti-police mayor if Paul Vallas is not elected, as has been predicted.
According to the post, “more crime, violence, and blood on the streets of this great city because there will be so few police” will follow their departure.
The union also noted that the police force is “already down nearly two thousand officers.” We can’t afford to lose so many people all at once. Long-term, that departure is also too much for our pension fund to bear. Voters, it said, have a week to “save the city.”
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Vallas Promised To Hire Hundreds More Police Officers If He Is Elected Mayor,
central plank of his campaign that also included support for the police force. In a recent argument, he predicted that “an infusion of experienced officers” will return to the department under new leadership.
This drive helped propel Johnson, 47, to victory on the city’s South and West sides, which are populated primarily by Black and Latinx Chicagoans and have some of the city’s highest rates of violence and crime.
In contrast, Vallas won substantial majorities in the city’s safer neighborhoods, such as the Northwest Side, Southwest Side, and downtown.
Even among those who had lost loved ones to violent crime, Johnson said, there was strong support for his plan to address the root causes of crime and violence by
Johnson, a Cook County commissioner who represents the West Side of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, wrote a resolution to “redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not
Those Reforms Were Always Supported By Johnson,
but he modified his language when discussing the movement to defund the police, which he had labeled a “real political goal” in a previous radio broadcast.
When asked about them during a public safety forum on March 14, Johnson responded, “I said it was a political goal.” I never claimed ownership of it.
Nearing the finish line, Johnson pledged not to decrease police funding by “one penny” and instead to reallocate $150 million already allocated to law enforcement.
According to Johnson’s campaign, this includes $50 million more to pay for change and meet the requirements of the consent decree.
Despite This Change, Vallas Maintained His Stance That Johnson Would “
defund the police” and that he would rapidly replace any open jobs in the department in order to implement a community policing policy.
To support his claim that Vallas was secretly a Republican at heart despite running for office as a “lifelong Democrat,” Johnson resorted to accusations similar to those regularly leveled at
Democrats in particular “should not hide from our values” if “we are going to unite this city,” Johnson said. If anything, our success shows that it is possible to bring Chicagoans together in support of genuine Democratic principles shared by the working class.
Johnson assured the people of Chicago that he would be honest with them about the problems facing the city.
