If Chicago is In Hot Pursuit of a Better Police Chase Policy, Why is It Moving So Slowly?
Although it remains unclear why Alvarez was being chased, having a gun in such circumstances often has been enough to justify an officer’s use of deadly force.
But should that be enough? Foot-pursuit policy is one of many issues that beg for clarity, even as new chases mount. The Chicago Police Department reports 1,300 foot pursuits from March to December 2020. About a third, or 382, resulted in the use of force, CPD says, and 30 resulted in use of deadly force.
That’s not the only policy that calls for “rethinking,” nor is Chicago the only city trying to rethink it. One recent example of surprisingly good news under a consent decree is Newark, which ended 2020 without its officers firing a single shot during the calendar year. The city’s crime rate declined and they didn’t have to pay a dime to settle any new police brutality cases.
Newark’s good fortune came after a consent decree concluded in 2014 that the city’s Police Department had “rot that had infested in the department for decades.”
That sounds familiar. I love Chicago and, of course, every city is different. But Newark’s success offers a promising example of what can be done, not by “abolishing” the police, as some radicals suggest, but by police, political and community leaders working together to, yes, rethink policing.
=========
(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
©2021 Clarence Page. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(c) 2021 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
