Mayor Emanuel Joins CPD Superintendent McCarthy and CPS CEO Brizard in Announcing School-Based CompStat Program
Mayor Rahm Emanuel today joined Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Chicago Public Schools CEO JC Brizard to announce the start of a school-based CompStat program for high schools. CPD and CPS are partnering to implement this program designed to increase safety and reduce crime in and around schools.
“School-based CompStat helps to create a culture of accountability so we can end crime near our schools and make sure our students can focus on their studies, not their safety,” said Mayor Emanuel.
Mayor Emanuel highlighted that partnership as a pillar of CompStat, the policing strategy the City is introducing in high schools. “By applying some of CompStat’s methods in and around schools, we can better coordinate the partnerships between school leaders and police,” he added.
The first school-based CompStat meeting is scheduled to take place on Tuesday December 13th.
“The safety and security of our students is a top priority for Chicago Public Schools. We know that when kids feel safe and secure at their school, they are able to learn and achieve. That’s why we have made a number of investments aimed at protecting and keeping our kids safe,” said CPS CEO JC Brizard. “The addition of CompStat strategies, which have been successful in cities around the country, is an important component of our work to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our children.”
School-based CompStat will be unique from CPD CompStat, in part, because “in-school” and school level infraction and incident data will be reviewed in addition to neighborhood incidents. They will be viewed in relation to the violence that occurs around the school and in the surrounding community, giving educators and the police department a more complete picture.
“CompStat is an invaluable tool and a dynamic method to reduce crime, improve quality of life, and effectively allocate personnel. We can identify patterns, hot spots, frequent offenders and target our resources to those areas,” said CPD Superintendent Garry McCarthy. “This is about more than cops on the dots, it is about having the right resources in place in the districts to reduce crime and curb violence. It is also about accountability.”
CompStat involves weekly crime control strategy meetings during which commanders share and discuss crime incidents, patterns and trends with command staff. The meetings focus on the statistical analysis of crime, where it occurs, how often and by whom, evaluate that and hold commanders accountable for the decisions they have made and the impact they have had on crime in their districts. Accountability benchmarks for school-based CompStat will be determined and regular review, on a daily, weekly, 28 day and yearly basis will be required of the program.
This process also allows CPD to monitor crime trends and issues in the districts while evaluating the skills of its commanders and assessing whether they need to allocate resources or personnel differently. “CompStat was not utilized at CPD in this manner before and, since we have started holding weekly meetings and empowering our district commanders, as well as added 881 more officers back into the districts, we have seen reductions in crime,” added McCarthy.
This is one part of the Emanuel Administration’s ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of Chicago’s children in schools and in their communities. CPS has made a number of investments aimed at protecting and keeping kids safe, including the preservation of the Culture of Calm Program. The program has successfully reduced misconduct and disruptive behavior at 38 CPS schools with high safety needs. Over 44,000 students are served through the program and CPS will fully fund it at $16.6 million next year. In addition, CPS has invested in school safety through:
- Increasing the number of school security officers at the request of its principals due to crime in their surrounding areas and major incidents at their schools;
- Committing $7 million to install a state of the art security camera system at 14 schools; and
- Maintaining Safe Passage funding at $10 million.
“I look forward to working with the Police Department to learn how we can collaborate to further strengthen our efforts to keep our students safe and secure. This is a citywide effort; we all must do our part in keeping our children safe,” added CEO Brizard.
# # #