Chicago Police Beats Criticized for Response Times

The city of Chicago’s police beat system doesn’t provide equal service to the city’s many districts, according to a city council member, leaving southside residents waiting hours for an officer to arrive in response to their calls. Council member Isaac Carothers produced figures showing the city’s northside beats experienced 10 “no beat car available” incidents during 2008, while southside beats had 1,200 “no beat” incidents. He intends to introduce legislation to speed up the police department’s current beat plan study that would redraw beat boundaries and reallocate officers to match the location of incidents. But police officials say the process of modifying beats–not done since 1985–is complex and time-consuming. Dep. Supt. Dan Dugan explained that CPD sends officers to 68% of the telephone calls that dispatchers receive, compared to about 30% for other major American cities. Read more about the debate here.