Over 400,000 High-Priority Incidents In Chicago In 2021 Had ‘No Police Available To Send’, New Data Shows

As crime continues to roil economic and social life in post-George Floyd, post-COVID Chicago, getting policing and criminal justice right are crucial. City officials are failing at that task.

We’re already seen anemic rates of arrest and prosecutions in Chicago, accompanied by finger-pointing between politicians over crime and the court system. And years of no support from city leadership, anti-policing legislation and the damaging rhetoric of the “defund” movement have taken a toll on Chicago police morale and manpower.

All that has spread the police force so thin that, in 2021, one of law enforcement’s most basic functions, responding to high-priority emergency service calls in a timely manner, was regularly beyond their capacity.

New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.

That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021. – READ MORE