Every resident deserves to live in a safe and healthy city. My commitment to you as your Alderman is to always promote and enable the safety and wellness of our neighborhoods in a comprehensive way. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, ensuring that our City invests in affordable housing, homelessness prevention, trauma-informed behavioral health care, youth programs, quality public education, and community-based violence prevention for the long-term stability of our communities.

Direct Public Safety Approach

One of the ways our office approaches public safety is through open communication with the police districts in our ward. In addition to our weekly meetings with the police districts, in which we specifically go over crime statistics over the previous seven days and discuss prevention strategies, we are in regular communication with them about any resident concerns and protocol questions. Our office takes our lead on public safety strategy directly from CPD; when they let us know about tactics that we can use to help improve safety, we tend to work with them to implement those tactics. For example, one of these strategies is to reduce the opportunity for crime, whether that be improving lighting in the area, altering the environment (such as the recently introduced trial parking ban), and installing new cameras. If they say they need additional officers, we support them there by advocating for more resources to that district. Our office has never refused a request for funding a new camera or license plate reader and we have never refused a letter of support for a commander requesting additional personnel. We continue to work together to tackle existing crime as well as prevent future crime in our respective ward and districts.

Our office and the respective police districts in our ward also occasionally host community meetings with residents and business owners if it comes to our attention that there is an ongoing public safety concern. When we were getting complaints regarding the late-night scene on Division Street, the 14th district and our office arranged a community meeting with the business owners of that street, which was followed by a BEAT meeting with residents to address these concerns. This is additional to biannual meetings my office has co-hosted with the 14th district with our Milwaukee corridor businesses in Wicker Park and Logan Square. We have also participated in accountability meetings with businesses whenever there has been an incident of violence closely tied to them, including Diversey Bowl, the Point, and the former East Room. Likewise, we recently met with members of the Ukrainian Village Safety Advocates regarding the new business opening up on the same street to discuss similar worries. We are consistently amenable to holding these types of meetings when we feel they are necessary to improve an acute public safety situation.

Interested in speaking with Police directly about public safety? Attend your local Beat Meetings! You can find out which Beat you live in by filling out your address here.

Holistic Public Safety Approach

Rather than limiting the scope of public safety only to the Chicago Police Department, our office takes a more holistic approach that includes affordable housing, budget, homelessness prevention, and violence prevention investment. The alderman voted for the 2022 budget almost solely because of investments in violence prevention that he knew would be effective. Over $82 million were budgeted in multiple programs through Department of Family and Support Services and the Department of Public Health to prevent violence and promote youth engagement and job training ($9.5M for workforce development, $16M for community violence initiatives, $5.1M for youth violence interventions, and $10M for the new models of youth justice diversion). So far, however, the administration hasn't spent any of those dollars on what they are allocated for, so the alderman is still actively pushing for them to have accountability and utilize those resources which have been proven to reduce and prevent violence in the community.

Community-Based Public Safety Approach

Our office partners with several of these types of non-profit organizations such as READI, CRED, and ALSO, which are all dedicated to providing trauma-based mental health care coupled with job training and employment opportunities. Statistically, youth who participate in these types of programs are 40% less likely to be involved in violent crime in comparison with their neighbors. Our biggest challenge in this regard remains to be actually using the dollars that are already allocated and budgeted for this purpose. Our office also works with several organizations dedicated to homelessness prevention and outreach, which provide engagement and services like shelter and mental health resources to those experiencing homelessness.