Chicago has seen a dramatic rise in the number of shootings and homicides this year. In August alone, there were 90 homicides, marking the first time in two decades there’ve been that many in a single month. Overall, the city has recorded more than 500 homicides this year — higher than all of 2015 — and is on pace to climb past the 600-homicide mark for the first time since 2003. There have also been more than 2,500 shooting incidents so far this year, about 700 more than in the same time period last year.
Johnson said the new hires will help rebuild trust between the community and his department, which has long struggled with a reputation for police misconduct and brutality, especially after several recent police shootings.
“If we want to stop the violence we need to find and arrest the people that are responsible,” he said. “If we want to earn the trust and respect of the people we serve, we need to take their pain seriously and investigate every crime as if it was a crime that happened to one of our own children.”
However, activists who’ve called for additional community resources and leadership changes said resources should be used elsewhere.
“The causes of crime and intra-communal violence exist because of the conditions of poverty that Rahm Emanuel has exacerbated for Chicago,” Black Lives Matter Chicago said in a statement “What more policing will accomplish is more violence, more lock ups and more trauma for our already suffering communities.”
Keeping up with this year’s spike in crime, which Emanuel said Wednesday is a new phenomenon, has been a problem for CPD. The percentage of homicides that detectives have been able to solve has dropped significantly.
“So we’re meeting it with a new response, which is more police, more technology, greater investment in mentoring, our summer jobs and our afterschool,” he said.
Last year, the city was forced to release a video of a white officer fatally shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014, sparking major protests as well as federal and local investigations. The fallout prompted Emanuel to fire his first police superintendent, Garry McCarthy at the end of last year.
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Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen and Caryn Rousseau contributed to this report.
Article Appeared @http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chicago-add-970-police-positions-years-42244590