Former CPS chief proposes shrinking CPD, growing violence prevention programs — like his own

Former CPS CEO Arne Duncan would shrink the Chicago Police Department slowly over five years, using the savings to increase violence prevention programs. | Sun-Times file

Chicago homicides are up by 51% this year, but down by 33% in Roseland, where $10 million in annual violence prevention programs have taken hold.

What if Chicago duplicated the Roseland model with similar violence prevention programs citywide and bankrolled that expansion by shrinking the Chicago Police Department through attrition and eliminating vacancies?

That’s the approach outlined Wednesday by former U.S. Education Secretary and Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan, who believes it’s time for Chicago to “lead the nation in reimagining public safety, rethinking the role of police, investing much more in alternatives and treating gun violence as a public health problem.”

Duncan stands to benefit from the strategy he champions. The non-profit he now runs to help at-risk youth — Chicago CRED, which stands for Creating Real Economic Destiny — works with partners in Roseland and fourteen other violent Chicago neighborhoods.

But in a virtual address to the City Club of Chicago, Duncan insisted he is motivated not by self-interest, but by a burning desire to stop the never-ending cycle of gang violence that is killing Chicago’s children and destroying the city he loves.

“It’s counter-intuitive to propose reducing the number of police when gun violence is surging, but police mostly react to shootings after the fact,” Duncan was quoted as saying in a press release.

“Our goal is to prevent them and the only way to do that is to deal directly with the people involved. Police aren’t trained to do that. And it’s unfair to ask them to do it. That’s a job for outreach.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to restore a sense of safety to every Chicago neighborhood — in part, by treating violence as the public health crisis both she and Duncan believe it is.

Duncan has apparently gotten a sneak-peek at the mayor’s soon-to-be-released violence prevention plan and called it “comprehensive, thoughtful and committed to expanding the community role.” He views it as a “great start for this conversation,” but only a start.

“We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. We have not had 400 murders in a year since 1965. It’s time to do things differently and take these violence prevention programs to scale,” he said.

Former CPS chief and U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan now has a nonprofit that works with at-risk youth.

Last week, a top mayoral aide told aldermen the Chicago Police Department has 847 sworn vacancies that could be reduced to chip away at a $1.25 billion shortfall in the city’s 2021 budget.

Duncan is essentially proposing the same thing.

He wants to shrink CPD over five years. He wouldn’t lay off sworn officers, but he would eliminate vacancies and not fill the jobs of retiring officers. Then, he’d use at least some of that money to create violence prevention programs in all Chicago neighborhoods that need them.

The stay-at-home order triggered by the coronavirus virtually shut down the police academy. So far this year, there have been just two classes — of 50 and 40 recruits, respectively. Two more are planned before the end of the year. That’s nowhere near enough to keep pace with the 464 retirements already this year.

If vacancies were eliminated and the hiring slowdown continued, the Chicago Police Department could be reduced by 500 positions a year, maybe more.

Duncan believes CPD could be reduced to 10,000 sworn officers and still have enough officers to safely patrol the city and reduce a dismal 45% homicide clearance rate — but only if violence prevention were a key component of the city’s strategy.

Without using the politically explosive term of “defunding” the police, he argued that “conservatively” leaving 1,000 vacancies unfilled could provide “up to $200 million for alternative investments in public safety.” Never mind the need to balance the budget.

Arne Duncan, a former U.S. education secretary and former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, spoke at a virtual meeting of the City Club of Chicago on Wednesday.

Duncan made the case for thinking differently in a power-point presentation to the City Club that noted:

• 80% of gun violence take place in 15 of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods.

• Most victims are young black men between the ages of 16 and 32.

• Less than 5% of police time is spent on violent crime, while 95% is spent on making arrests for non-violent crime.

• Chicago has twice as many police officers as Los Angeles and about the same as New York City. But Chicago has “three-to-five times more gun violence than L.A. and New York.” Chicago could shrink by as many as 3,000 officers and still have more police officers-per-capita than L.A.

• New York (at 83.5%) and L.A. (74%) have homicide clearance rates that put Chicago’s 45% to shame.

With homicides up 51% from a year ago, any effort to reduce police vacancies is almost certain to meet heavy resistance.

Aldermen from across the city are clamoring for more police officers and complaining their local police districts have been stripped of officers to staff new specialized units created by CPD Supt. David Brown.

Chicago CRED is working with roughly 500 young men, ages 17 to 24, disconnected from work and school and most in danger of being victims or perpetrators of gun violence.

The painstaking process starts with what Duncan calls “street outreach teams with tremendous credibility with different cliques.” They approach young men who are, Duncan said, justifiably cynical because “they’ve been lied to so many times” and had so many programs give up on them. They ask these forgotten young men to “give us a chance,” Duncan said.

Those who agree are “surrounded by a team of adults totally focused on their long-term success” with counseling, education, job training and job placement. Some of the “life coaches” are ex-offenders themselves.