By Frank Main
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — With murders soaring this year in Chicago, former police Supt. Jody Weis said he understands some aldermen’s call for a return to the specialized citywide units he put on the streets to fight crime.
Weis said that might not be possible because of a decline in the number of officers on the police department since he left office in early 2011.
But he did allow that “it might be time to call an audible — make a slight course adjustment” in police tactics, something he had to do when he formed the specialized units in 2008.
Still, he wasn’t ready to second-guess the current superintendent, Garry McCarthy, saying in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday: “I don’t think it’s right for someone who sat in that chair to offer comments on how his successor’s doing.”
This week, South Side aldermen Anthony Beale (9th) and Willie Cochran (20th) said McCarthy’s strategy of disbanding the specialized units to put more cops on beat patrol isn’t working.
“We need to bring the Targeted Response Unit and the Mobile Strike Force back in conjunction with what the mayor has instituted in terms of beefing up the beat cop,” said Beale, the former chairman of the City Council’s Police Committee.
“Those officers were specially trained and highly motivated,” Beale said. “Without them, there’s nothing to combat the [gang] retaliation. Beat officers are not equipped.”
Lt. Maureen Biggane, a police spokeswoman, pointed out 200 cops are available for the city’s three area deputy chiefs to send wherever they want.
“Unlike the large saturation units, these officers have geographic integrity and responsibility, working fully in support of the beat officer,” she said.
The aldermen were reacting to a sharp rise in killings so far this year.
Through the end of June, Chicago had 39 percent more murders than over the same period of 2011.
“It’s been a bloody year for the people on the West and South sides,” Weis acknowledged.
“I think they’re frustrated,” he said of the aldermen. “Their constituents are frustrated with the crime level. I certainly feel their frustration.”
But Weis — who served as Chicago’s top cop from 2008 to early 2011 — said the dynamics are different from when he launched the Mobile Strike Force, initially a unit of about 200 officers trained in SWAT tactics. He sent them to quell violence in hot spots around the city.
Weis said there were about 12,500 sworn employees on the department when he was superintendent.
“They’re probably under 12,000 now,” he said. “There may not be enough officers now to have specialized units. . . . Any of these ideas of specialized units requires human beings, but you have to provide the basic services first.”
When Rahm Emanuel became mayor in early 2011, he pledged to put an additional 1,000 officers on patrol.
McCarthy accomplished that by disbanding the Mobile Strike Force and another roving unit, the Targeted Response Unit that was formed before Weis took office. McCarthy also moved officers from desk jobs to beat cars.
McCarthy has insisted his strategy of having district commanders direct patrol officers to interrupt gang violence is paying dividends — despite the murder totals. In the second quarter of 2012, the increase in murders started to decrease, he said.
“We’re starting to move in the right direction,” McCarthy has told the Sun-Times, also stressing that other categories of crime have been falling in the city.
While Weis refused to criticize McCarthy’s tactics, he did say, “It might be time to call an ‘audible’ — make a slight course adjustment.” Weis noted that he realized he needed to call his own “audible” when murders started rising after he took over as superintendent in 2008.
“What we were doing wasn’t working, so I called an audible for the formation of the Mobile Strike Force,” he said. “That was the right play for the time — it might not be today.”
Weis recalled that murders were up about 12 percent when the chairman of the City Council’s Police Committee at the time, Isaac “Ike” Carothers, put him on the hot seat in July 2008 and demanded to know what he was doing to stop the bloodshed.
“I started to look at what was causing this,” Weis said. “The department was coming off its best year [from a decades-low 448 murders in 2007 to 513 murders in 2008]. There was an uptick in murders, and nothing [else] had really changed.”
He said a sergeant suggested that Weis bring back a version of the Special Operations Section, a citywide unit that was disbanded after about a dozen officers were caught committing crimes.
“We made a smaller, leaner version of SOS with better supervision,” Weis said.
He said Bill Bratton, the former head of the New York and Los Angeles police departments, warned him about creating an elite, specialized unit like the Mobile Strike Force, saying it could get out of control and “blow up in our face.”
“I told Bill I was looking at a unit with greater training and a group focused on crime prevention, not a group looking to arrest everybody we can,” he said. “Bill said he would be nervous, you have to watch it very carefully, but you have to do something.”
The next year, in 2009, the number of murders fell to 459, and they dropped again the following year to 436 murders.
There were 443 murders in 2011.
“I was really, really hopeful that last year we would be below 400,” Weis said. “It was within reach and unfortunately it didn’t happen. . . . That’s a mark we really need to strive for: to get below 400 murders.”
Weis stressed that he’s willing to do what he can to help.
“If there’s anything I can do for the city or the police department,” Weis said, “I am ready to serve. Nobody wants Garry to succeed more than me, because I have sat in his chair.”
Copyright 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC