John Garrido

In Order To Create a Safer Community We Must…

It has been well doc­u­mented that the City of Chicago has a short­age of police offi­cers. The 16^th District that makes up most of the 45^th Ward and the 17^th District that makes up a small por­tion of the Ward have both seen an influx of gang mem­bers and a reduc­tion in police per­son­nel. Criminal street gangs have suc­cess­fully estab­lished footholds in sta­ble neigh­bor­hoods and local parks, while Pat Levar has stood idly by as valu­able police resources have been depleted from our community.

Portage Park is on the front line of this bat­tle, and we need all the resources we can get to keep this and other ward neigh­bor­hoods safe. I know and under­stand how the Chicago Police Department works, and I also know that it is attempt­ing to do the impos­si­ble, in that it is attempt­ing to reduce crime with less avail­able offi­cers on the street. As alder­man, I will demand that our com­mu­nity is pro­vided with the nec­es­sary police man­power and equip­ment to com­bat these vio­lent gangs and keep our streets safe.

Lateral Transfer Plan

We need more offi­cers on the street as soon as pos­si­ble. Unfortunately, the cur­rent hir­ing process would not allow new offi­cers to hit the streets any­time soon. At the ear­li­est, it would be late fall of 2011 before the 200 offi­cers sched­uled to be hired next year com­plete their train­ing and leave the acad­emy. In order to expe­dite the hir­ing process and bring expe­ri­enced offi­cers into the Chicago Police Department, I pro­pose that we begin hir­ing expe­ri­enced offi­cers from other munic­i­pal police depart­ments. Under this “lat­eral trans­fer” plan, offi­cers with at least two (2) years of sworn law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence who pass a review process would imme­di­ately be hired as pro­ba­tion­ary police offi­cers. They would then be placed into an accel­er­ated acad­emy class to famil­iar­ize them with Chicago spe­cific ordi­nances and police pro­ce­dures. Thus, by reduc­ing the redun­dant train­ing of a cer­ti­fied Illinois Peace Officer, we could have expe­ri­enced offi­cers on the street in 1/​6 the time that it takes to train a new officer.

Demand Red Light Camera Reform

Red light cam­eras are just another way for the city to gen­er­ate rev­enue under the guise of pub­lic safety. A study by the University of Illinois-​​Chicago con­cluded that Red Light Cameras in Chicago actu­ally increased acci­dents by 5%. Instead of prop­erly man­ag­ing our resources, our city coun­cil con­tin­ues to find ways to bal­ance the bud­get on the backs of tax­pay­ers. Once elected, I will ensure all red light cam­eras are removed from the 45^th Ward.