Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher, told WTTW News on Thursday’s “Chicago Tonight” that he would give his administration an A-minus “at least for style,” with much more work to be done.
public safety
The size of the Chicago Police Department is essentially unchanged since Mayor Brandon Johnson took office 100 days ago. There are 12,363 employees, including 11,722 sworn officers.
On Monday, WTTW News launches a new initiative, “A Safer City.” In an effort to help facilitate the complicated but necessary conversation around violence, we aim to explore violence in all its forms with depth and nuance.
It will be up to Garien Gatewood, the city’s new deputy mayor for community safety, to make good on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s promise to take a new approach to the surge of crime and violence that took hold in Chicago.
Backing from the rank and file. Removing racist officers. Protecting marginalized communities. Those are just some of the priorities Chicagoans said they have for the next police superintendent during a virtual forum held Tuesday.
It’s now the job of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to lead a search and to nominate three police superintendent candidates for Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson to consider.
Chicago voters rejected efforts by moderate Democrats and Republicans to turn Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s support for criminal justice reform into a fatal liability.
In his victory speech, Brandon Johnson emphasized the importance of coalition in his campain and pointed toward the need to continue building coalitions across the city moving forward. He appealed to those who did not vote for him and promised to work together.
Chicago will elect a new mayor and voters in 14 wards will also elect a new alderperson to the Chicago City Council.
Efforts by the leaders of large cities across the country to bring back officers amid a nationwide staffing crunch have fallen short, and experts on policing told WTTW News there is no evidence that Chicago will prove to be any different.
A shuttered Kmart will no longer serve as temporary housing for 658 asylum seekers currently living in Illinois. A source close to the situation said some of the migrants have found places to live independently while others will continue to stay at hotels, mostly in the south and southwest suburbs.
Sources told WTTW News the migrants — mostly asylum seekers — will be relocated from the suburbs, where they are currently staying at hotels. The 100,000-square-foot Kmart has sat vacant at the corner of 71st Street and Pulaski Road since 2016.
The former Wadsworth Elementary School had been set to open as a shelter in early January, but an uproar forced Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to delay her plans for nearly a month as she and other city officials sought to address concerns from residents.
The measure, backed by 18 members of the City Council, won the unanimous endorsement of the City Council’s Public Safety committee and heads to the full City Council on Wednesday for a final vote.
After earlier announcing that Colorado would help asylum-seeking migrants leave the state for their intended destinations, Gov. Jared Polis said the state would not be sending additional buses of migrants to New York City and Chicago following “a very productive conversation” with the mayors of both cities, according to a press release from his office.
Mayors Lori Lightfoot and Eric Adams are urging Colorado's governor to instead partner with Chicago and New York City to advocate for federal solutions to the nation’s ongoing challenges surrounding asylum seekers.
