The group monitoring court-ordered police reforms in Chicago cited a "high number of vacancies" at the Chicago Police Department impacting community safety and officer safety.
The latest report card on police reforms issued Friday also came with a startling statistic: more Chicago police officers retired in the first six months of this year than all of 2018.
Between January and June of 2021, Chicago police saw 363 officers leave the department. The losses include Chicago's Deputy Chief at the Bureau of Crime Control, at a time when police struggle to get crime under control with carjackings, shootings and murders all up, ABC7 reports.
Friday's status update on how Chicago police reforms calls out the high number of police vacancies "which ultimately impact officer safety, community safety, and the CPD'S ability to meet the unity of command and span of control requirements set out in the Consent Decree."
In other words, gaps in staffing are among the many reasons cited in the nearly 1,000-page report that CPD has so far complied with only about half of court-ordered reforms.
"Let me set the context of vacancies attrition. From the department we normally have an attrition rate between 4% and 5%," said CPD Supt. David Brown. "This year we're tracking slightly above 6%."
