AST Digital Magazine June 2017 Digital-June | Page 10

Volume 13
June 2017
Edition
At Chicago Police Department headquarters,
personnel
in
the Crime Prevention and Information Center monitor vio-
That street-level focus is in response lent
to a crimes
city ho- throughout the city using surveillance video and
other sophisticated
tools.
FBI analysts
assigned
to the neigh-
cen-
working
together
in the city’s
most violent
micide rate that has “increased
expo-
ter
offer
additional
real-time
intelligence
that
helps
police
of-
borhoods
“has
helped
quite
a
bit,”
Johnson
said.
nentially,” Anderson said.
ficials deploy resources
as real-time
efficiently
as possible.
“And we get
intelligence
from (Image
the FBI
courtesy
of
the
FBI)
that we didn’t get before. They can look at our
“The num-
crime picture and help us figure out where to
best deploy our resources.”
Johnson, a Chicago native and 29-
year veteran of
ber of
shootings
is at a level that
hasn’t been seen here
since the early 1990s.” As a result, he ex-
plained, “what you are seeing and will continue
to see in Chicago is a sustained FBI effort to sup-
port and supplement our local partners.”
That effort involves three major areas:
• The creation in 2016 of a homicide task
force—in addition to the FBI’s existing violent
crimes squad—in which agents work along-
side CPD detectives and other law enforce-
ment officers in the city’s worst crime districts;
• Increased intelligence-gathering efforts to
identify shooters and “directors of violence,”
which includes embedding FBI analysts at
CPD headquarters; and
• Stepping up community outreach efforts to
gain the public’s trust and enlist their help in
solving crimes and making communities saf-
er.
“Simply put,” said CPD Superintendent Eddie
Johnson, “the FBI has more resources than we
do. We combine the resources we have with the
ones they have to fight these crimes.”
FBI and CPD homicide task force personnel
t h e
police force
who spent many
years as a patrol officer,
believes a key reason for the city’s
current violence is inadequate gun laws.
(Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson
describes how crime and violence has evolved in the city he
grew up in. Courtesy of the FBI and YouTube)
“The flow of guns into Chicago is just insane,” he
said.
“You will find that gang members would rather
be caught with a gun by law enforcement than
caught without one by their rivals. What we have
to do through legislation is create a mentality
where gang members won’t want to pick up a
gun,” he explained.
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