The new boss, Superintendent Brown, came to Chicago from Dallas. I wonder if he's thought about going back? He's also got a State's Attorney and judges working against him. Tough job.
While Brown spent much of his news conference calling for stricter enforcement of gun and drug laws — repeatedly referring to shooters as “evil bastards” — he also acknowledged how hard it is to police the problem away.
“That’s why they’re there — to feed their families,” he said. “It’s a bad choice. But without the help of mentors in my neighborhood, I would have been one of these kids.”
Brown called himself a “community policing person,” and said he believes officers who arrest young people need to use the ride to jail as an opportunity for mentoring. “We have to offer them options,” he said. “If we say, ‘Get off the corner and stop the behavior of selling drugs, carrying a gun,' we have to be able as a city to say, ‘And let me introduce you to an option that will help you provide for your family.‘”
Still, Brown said he believes too many people arrested on drug and gun charges are being released on low bonds or on electronic monitoring — a criticism several of his predecessors regularly voiced. He called drug dealing and possessing guns “precursors to violence.”
“When they have no consequence, violence continues,” he said. “Our endgame is arrest. … Every day we’re going to be clearing corners, every day we’re going to be clearing these drug corners to protect these young people from violence.”
