Chicago (AFP) – The city of Chicago will hire more police officers to help it combat the highest murder rate of any major US city, media reports said Wednesday.
Chicago’s police chief is expected to announce that almost 1,000 additional officers, detectives and command staff will be hired over the next two years, according to the reports.
“I took a real hard look at it and this is what I think we need to make Chicago safer… It’s going to cost. But there’s no price for the safety of this city,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told the Sun-Times newspaper.
He said he did not know how the additional force will be paid for.
The city already has a full-time police force of approximately 12,000. But in recent years it has relied on overtime to increase its staffing levels and combat a rising crime problem.
The decision to increase the force is a reversal of that strategy, and comes amid a spike in violent crime.
The city has already recorded more than 500 murders for 2016 — a 50 percent increase from 2015, and a rate not seen since the 1990s, according to an analysis by the Chicago Tribune. Chicago has more murders than Los Angeles and New York combined — both of which are bigger cities.
To make matters worse, the police department reportedly only solves about 30 percent of homicides.
By contrast, New York, the largest US city, experienced its safest summer in more than 20 years, according to its police department’s crime statistics. It recorded 352 murders in 2015, compared to 1,946 in 1993.
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