RX FOR PROACTIVE POLICING IN CHICAGO: GET COPS OUT OF DESK JOBS AND INTO NEIGHBORHOODS WHERE THE MOST CRIME OCCURS. IT AIN’T ROCKET SCIENCE!
The tragically violent Memorial Day holiday weekend in Chicago ended with nearly 40 people wounded and two killed in shootings, and hundreds of teens confounding police in an unruly, over-amped gathering on a South Side lakefront beach.
Disturbing news for every Chicagoan to digest, and even more distasteful food for thought among those of us in the chattering class.
If you’ve covered Chicago long enough as a journalist, as I have, you’re skeptical when pols offer simple solutions to complicated problems like street crime and law enforcement.
“We just need more police,” they say, or “better officers,” or “different ones,” or “teen crackdowns.”
Sound bites aside, none of it means much if the cops you already have aren’t where the violence and disturbances are. And that’s the uncomfortable truth emerging from the latest Chicago Police Department—CPD—workforce study, a long-overdue, court-mandated deep dive into how the department actually deploys its people.
The findings don’t just raise eyebrows. They ought to set off alarms.
Because they suggest that Chicago doesn’t just have a crime problem—it has a deployment problem.
The city still struggles with violent crime levels that, while improving from the worst pandemic-era spikes, remain stubbornly high by national standards.
In 2025 there were more than 25,000 violent crimes reported, including hundreds of homicides and thousands of shootings. And while the homicide arrest rate is up, police only catch alleged perpetrators in one of seven, or 15 per cent of nonviolent crimes like robbery, burglary and carjacking.
At the same time, according to the study, CPD assigns sworn police officers — the highly-trained, highly-paid ones — to administrative and support roles at a significantly higher rate than comparable big-city departments.
Hundreds of cops with badges and guns are pushing paper instead of policing neighborhoods.
The study estimates roughly 600 positions currently filled by sworn officers could be shifted to civilian employees. Not eliminated — just reassigned. Put civilians behind desks so trained officers can do what they were hired to do: Patrol neighborhoods, deter crime, and solve cases.
It’s not a radical idea. It’s common sense.
But in Chicago, common sense has a long history of getting tangled up in politics, union contracts, and institutional inertia. And that brings us to the second uncomfortable finding: Officer assignments don’t consistently match the areas where the most crimes occur.
That’s not speculation—it’s reality. High-crime areas — particularly on the South and West sides — generate the most 911 calls and suffer the most violence, yet there’s little evidence those areas have proportionally more patrol resources.
In a city where a relatively small number of neighborhoods account for a disproportionate share of violent crime, police staffing isn’t closely aligned with that reality.
Instead, it’s shaped by district boundaries, historical patterns, and — no spoiler alert needed here— political considerations.
Aldermen in low-crime wards don’t want fewer cops, and mayors don’t want to lose their support on key issues or alienate their voters .
That’s not proactive policing. That’s ineffectual policing the “Chicago Way.”
As for the unacceptably low arrest rate? Well, if you don’t have enough cops on the street in the toughest neighborhoods gathering intelligence, building community relationships, and responding quickly, you don’t solve crimes.
If you don’t solve crimes, you don’t make arrests. And if you don’t make arrests, you don’t deter the next crime.
It’s not complicated. It’s a chain reaction.
Bottom line: Sworn officers should be doing work that actually requires sworn authority. Everything else? Civilianize it.
Answer phones. Process paperwork. Handle administrative reviews. There’s no shortage of tasks that don’t require a badge.
And put the most cops where there’s the most crime is.
It ain’t rocket science!
Overtime alone has ballooned into the hundreds of millions annually, a direct byproduct of staffing shortages in patrol and investigative units.
But no one at City Hall or CPD headquarters is acting on the report’s findings. They’re not telling politically-connected officers they’re moving out from behind desks, or renegotiating job roles, or redrawing long-standing deployment patterns.
Making politically unpopular decisions is hard.
But if the goal is reducing violent crime — not just talking about it — the city has to confront an obvious question:
Why are so many of our cops sitting down when they should be standing up, or cruising around low crime districts instead of joining colleagues in hot spots where they’re desperately needed?
Until that changes, with new or suddenly enlightened leadership at City Hall and the CPD, don’t expect the arrest numbers — or the crime numbers — to change much either.
In this case the Chicago Way is, by every measure that defines a city’s health, vibrancy and attractiveness, the Wrong Way. Tragically—today and for the future.
Andy Shaw is a semi-retired Chicago journalist and good government watchdog. Email your thoughts and comments to andyshawchicago@gmail.com
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