This Chicago Criminal attorney has posted here, here, and here about the decrease in crime in the city.
She could have saved the Chicago taxpayer a considerable sum that we paid to Deloitte & Touche to tell us that arrests are down.
Mayor Daley closed the books on 2009 with just $2.7 million in the bank, having added $461 million to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers, year-end audits show.
As low as the unreserved cash balance is, it’s more than ten-times higher than the $200,000 the city had left after 2008.
Performed by the accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche, the audits provide a treasure-trove of information about city finances and operations.
They reveal everything from a steady decline in police arrests, O’Hare Airport passengers and refuse collections to an increase in passenger boardings at economy-minded Midway Airport.
The audits also include some troubling numbers that have nothing to do with city finances.
The number of “physical arrests” by Chicago Police continued their steady decline — from 227,576 in 2006 and 196,621 in 2008 to 181,254 last year.
The downward trend coincides with a hiring slowdown that has left the Police Department more than 2,000 officers-a-day below authorized strength. It also coincides with allegations of “de-policing,” a condition that exists when police officers “stop doing their jobs” because they're afraid nobody has their back.
Police Department spokesman Roderick Drew said the department “doesn’t measure the success of crime-fighting strategies simply by the number of arrests.” He argued that the “true measure” is the reduction in reported crime that Chicago has experienced over the past decade.
“In fact we have experienced 18 consecutive months of lower overall crime in Chicago dating back to January 2009,” he said.
Earlier today this Chicago Criminal attorney spoke to some of Chicago’s finest about “de-policing. Interesting choice of words don't you think?
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