After a deadly summer, Chicago plans nearly 1,000 new hires for police department

Reporting from Chicago  —  Facing a wave of rising violence and the perception that the Chicago Police Department is overwhelmed, Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s administration announced plans Wednesday to hire nearly 1,000 new officers, detectives and other personnel to rein in the bloodshed ravaging the city’s most troubled neighborhoods.

The hiring plan includes more than 500 new police officers and 200 new detectives in an effort to improve the department’s low clearance rate for homicides.

At a news conference at police headquarters, Supt. Eddie Johnson said the additions of hundreds of officers will bring the department close to 13,500 sworn positions.

To improve the supervision of street-level cops, he said, 112 new sergeants and more than 50 lieutenants would be added. In addition, 92 new field training officers would be hired to help train new recruits.

“The simple fact is we have to do better,” he told reporters.

Chicago police officer looks inside a vehicle after a homicide.

(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune )

Johnson said a few months ago that Emanuel asked what the department would look like if the superintendent was building it from scratch and resources were unlimited. The result of those discussions led to the plan he announced Wednesday in front of dozens of officers.

“We’re going to get all the things we asked for,” Johnson said.

Police officials said they plan to hire new officers to replace those who are promoted. The new hiring would be above and beyond the need to hire new officers to replace those who retire or leave the department for other reasons.

The attrition of existing officers has been exacerbated by the planned departure of many who say they are fed up with the low morale and bad media coverage in the last couple of years.

Many details of the hiring, though, remained vague about exactly when the promised officers would be hired and how the city would pay for them.

The announcement comes as the mayor and his police department have been under mounting pressure over rising crime in Chicago. The homicide rate has increased by 50% this year, with the total on pace to exceed 600 by the end of the year, and the U.S. Department of Justice continues to probe the department’s oversight in the wake of a string of civil rights scandals.

More than 3,000 people already have been shot in the city this year, a number that already has surpassed the 2,980 people shot last year. Similarly, Chicago topped 500 homicides as of early this month after tallying 481 in all of 2015, according to Chicago Tribune data.

The mayor’s administration rolled out the announcement of planned hiring a day before Emanuel is scheduled to give a speech about his efforts to address the violence afflicting the city’s poorest and most segregated neighborhoods.

The mayor’s address is also expected to promise more resources for mentoring and educational opportunities for young people most threatened by violence in those communities.

Johnson said that in addition to the new patrol officers, the department would also increase its number of detectives by 200, which would bring the total to 1,063 — still about 100 fewer than the number in 2009.

Hiring more supervisors was likely to be among the demands that will eventually be made by the Justice Department in its ongoing investigation of Chicago police, which was prompted after Laquan McDonald was shot and killed by an officer. McDonald, a 17-year-old African American, was shot 16 times by Jason Van Dyke, a white officer, in 2014. Van Dyke has been charged with murder.

The lack of supervisors has often been noted by critics as a piece of the department’s ongoing problems with misconduct and poor oversight.

Police and mayoral spokesmen both said Wednesday that the department also planned to hire 454 more new officers to replace the vacancies created by supervisory and detective promotions.

With attrition replacement hires, officials are claiming they city will hire more than 2,000 new police officers over the next two years — a pace that would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the city budget at a time when municipal finances are already in distress.

In the past, when the mayor has promised to increase police presence on the street, the reality has been a confusing pattern of rearranging officers already on the force — moving people doing desk jobs to the front lines, and shifting resources from low-crime areas to violent hot spots.

The number of officers has dwindled since the final years of former Mayor Richard M. Daley‘s administration, which ended in 2011. At the time, the city was confronted without mounting budget deficits and crime had receded slightly from the ranks of the city’s most pressing concerns.

For Emanuel, the move marks a change in course in how he’s managed the policing of Chicago. Emanuel has insisted for years that the current number of officers has been enough to fight crime in the city, and the mayor instead has relied on more than $100 million a year in overtime to provide enough officers in the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods during the typically more violent summer months.

The cost of a new police officer is $138,000 in the first year, which includes salary, supervision and other benefits, city budget spokeswoman Molly Poppe said. After five years on the force, the cost of that officer rises to $180,000.

Heinzman writes for the Chicago Tribune.

UPDATES:

2:15 pm.: This article was updated with additional details about plans by the Chicago Police Department to hire close to 1,000 new officers, detectives and other personnel.

This article was originally published at 10:15 a.m.