The Chicago Police Department would be required to immediately launch a new study of whether officers are efficiently and effectively deployed across the city, under a measure set to be considered by a key City Council committee.
Matt Martin
City Council Gives Inspector General Term Limits, Approves Purchase of Motel for Unhoused Chicagoans
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg backed the term limit, saying it will protect the watchdog’s independence and bring “stability, order, independence” to the office.
Limiting the city’s watchdog to two terms would bring “stability, order, independence” to the office, which oversees all city departments and contractors as well as the mayor’s office, City Council and its committees, current Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said.
The Chicago City Council could vote on the deal as soon as March 1 – one day after Mayor Lori Lightfoot and City Council members ask voters for new four-year terms in office.
The six recommended appointees to the board, which was created in June 2021, all received unanimous support during a key committee hearing. Next up is a full Chicago City Council vote.
“It is not a good look for him to have the oxygen and audacity not to show up,” Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) said.
The groups say they don’t just want things like protected bike lanes, signal priority for buses, and other improvements to be limited to this stretch of street, calling on the Chicago Department of Transportation to “perform critical safety and quality-of-life upgrades” in the course of every major street resurfacing citywide.
Chicago Police stepped up their use of the city’s overall curfew law this summer recording 141 curfew violations, an increase of approximately 57% as compared with the same period in 2021, according to police department data.
Chicago’s North Center neighborhood is a community where many city dwellers raise a family with lots of schools, parks, and public space. Many residents and community leaders have worked for years to create a community feel and, to address infrastructure needs to improve transportation safety.
The walk-and-roll rally on Sunday began at Leavitt Street and Eastwood Avenue in Lincoln Square, where 2-year-old Raphael “Rafi” Cardenas was struck and killed by a driver June 2 while he was crossing the street on a scooter. At last report, the driver has not been cited.
During Thursday’s City Council meeting, alderpeople introduced a resolution calling for the Department of Streets and Sanitation to reinstate treatment of the city’s remaining parkway ash trees — numbering close to 50,000 — and also develop a systematic program for removing and replacing infested trees.
The two-year, $3.5 million pilot program represents the first time in Chicago’s history that the city’s emergency dispatch system will send someone other than a sworn and armed police officer to a call for help, officials said.
The site of the long-defunct hospital is poised to be transformed into a new Chicago neighborhood offering 4,800 homes, plus offices, research facilities and stores as part of a $4 billion redevelopment. “This has been a long time coming,” said Ald. Sophia King.
A proposal to create an elected board of Chicagoans to oversee the Chicago Police Department is likely to pass easily, now that it has the backing of a coalition of community groups and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, several aldermen told “Chicago Tonight” on Monday.
Eight miles north from the Loop, manufacturing buildings, Victorian homes and small businesses line Ravenswood’s streets. The community is neighbored by North Center and Lincoln Square, and there’s much disagreement over where the three neighborhoods’ borders end and begin.
A joint session of the City Council’s Public Safety and Finance committees declined to advance the measure backed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and blasted by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson and other transparency advocates as nothing more than “smoke and mirrors.”
