Badges - Re: Cuts in Chicago
- From: Charles Rahn <c.t.rahn@xxxxxxxx>
- To: Badges 1Badge <badges@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:59:52 -0400
BOHICA to the citizens of Chicago.
From: CHK8093@xxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:41:41 -0400
Subject: Badges - Cuts in Chicago
To: TOPCOPS-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; badges@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;
COPS-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; POLICE-L@xxxxxxxxxxx
What vacancies? Just because it is budgeted,
doesn't mean the jobs were filled and the money spent on salaries. We are
not 1,400 short, it is more like 2,500 and more retirements are coming. It has
been years since we were fully manned. He wants to cut after Rahm
volunteered to host both the G8 and NATO summits next May. We haven't seen a
raise in years, manpower is to the point where many beats go unmanned on all
three watches, police shootings are up, attacks on police are up, morale is
down
and the Mayor has all but declared war on City employees, especially Police and
Fire.
Bend over, her it comes......from the
Sun-Times
Chris Karney, Chicago IL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Supt. Garry McCarthy to cut $190M from police
budget:
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Tuesday
he’s been asked to cut $190 million from the Police Department’s $1.3 billion
annual budget and would only get halfway there by eliminating police
vacancies.
“We are looking at absolutely everything. There are ways to
save money but the question is, how close to the bone do we have to get?”
McCarthy said.
“We have to eliminate about $190 million. We are at a point
right now that, if we eliminated all our vacancies, we would save approximately
$93 million. That gets us about halfway.”
There are about 13,500 budgeted positions for sworn officers
and about 1,400 vacancies. About 775 officers are on medical leave, a
department
spokeswoman said.
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), former chairman of the City
Council’s Police Committee, has infuriated the Fraternal Order of Police with
his cost-cutting suggestions.
Beale recommended axing officers’ $1,800 a year uniform
allowance as well as duty-availability pay — a supplemental $2,800 a year lump
sum that compensates officers for being on call at any time.
Asked whether those items are on his hit list, McCarthy would
only say “that has to be negotiated” when the police contract expires June
30.
But he said, “We are looking at cutting 15 to 20 percent
across the board.”
Former Mayor Richard M. Daley routinely saved tens of
millions of dollars by authorizing a certain number of officers in his annual
budget, then failing to fill police vacancies or keep pace with attrition. His
final budget was a classic example. It authorized the hiring of 200 additional
police officers, but not one of them has been hired or entered the police
academy.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel may have no alternative but to play the
same manpower game. But that would run contrary to his campaign promise to put
an additional 1,000 police officers in the patrol division — and his recent
promise to erase a more than $635 million shortfall without cutting police,
raising taxes or using one-time or casino revenues. “We’re not changing how
many
police we have. I’m not going to skimp on public safety,” the mayor told the
Chicago Sun-Times earlier this month.
Civic Federation President Laurence Msall welcomed Emanuel’s
decision to make deep cuts in the police department’s budget, which previous
mayors have viewed as politically untouchable.
In a road map to fiscal solvency released two months ago, the
Civic Federation urged the new mayor to eliminate “unnecessary layers of
management” and supervisory benefits in the police department, reduce “chronic
absenteeism” and redraw maps of police districts and “strategize beat staffing”
based on the U.S. census, 911 calls and relevant crime data.
“We feel strongly that the Chicago Police Department needs to
right-size its management to reflect potential savings generated from following
the leaner management of New York City and Houston, both of which operate with
fewer management layers,” Msall said.
Msall hedged when asked whether $190 million can be squeezed
from the police budget without eliminating police vacancies.
“More important than the number of sworn officers is the
number of patrolmen working the streets and responding to calls,” Msall
said.
In his first 100 days in office, McCarthy has shifted 750
cops to patrol from desk jobs and from disbanded citywide teams such as the
Mobile Strike Force and Targeted Response Unit. He also recently eliminated
several layers of the command structure at the top.
The Civic Federation has proposed a similar cut in the Fire
Department’s budget by re-evaluating everything from minimum staffing
requirements for fire apparatus to the number and location of fire stations and
by examining ways to outsource and reduce disability absences. The review would
be the first since a largely ignored 1999 report by the Tri-Data Corp.
During an interview on his first 100 days in office, Emanuel
noted that the number of fires has steadily declined over the years. Without
offering specifics, the mayor said he has “some ideas” about how to make more
effective use of firefighter downtime.
“I’m aware of what has happened over the years,
but there are choices to be made,” he said. “As I go to the engine houses, I
say, ‘What happens here guys can’t be sacrosanct.’
”
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