... 660 cops retired in 2021 under the one-time Defund the Police advocate

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10661227/Lori-Lightfoot-secret-70-cops-protecting-crime-Chicago-spirals.html

By Alex Hammer
The Daily Mail
March 28, 2022

One-time Defund the Police advocate Mayor Lori Lightfoot has a secret group of Chicago cops known as Unit 544 protecting her alongside her bodyguards, it has been revealed.

The unit of 65 officers, five sergeants and a lieutenant are provide round-the-clock protection for the city’s mayor, together with her bodyguard detail of about 20 men, The Chicago Sun Times has revealed, citing city records.

The revelation comes as crime in the Windy City has surged to frightening new rates not seen in half a decade, and after Lightfoot proposed slashing a whopping $80 million from the Chicago Police Department budget in 2020 during the Defund the Police protests.

The proposal was later scaled back and 3.33 percent of the budget – or $59 million – was cut.

It also comes amid news 660 cops retired in 2021 - almost twice as many as in 2018. The mass retirements came in the same year Lightfoot announced a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for city employees.

Lightfoot, 59, has since denounced the movement and in December pleaded with Attorney General Merrick Garland to send Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents to the city for six months after the city saw its murder rate jump to a 25-year high.

The Chicago Sun Times reports that a memo was sent to Chicago officers in July 2020, during the height of the pandemic-spurred crime wave, informing they could apply for the unit shortly before the task force was formed.

It read: ‘The unit’s mission will be to provide physical security for City Hall, the mayor’s residence and the mayor’s detail command post.

'Through the coordination of intelligence and resources, officers will respond to all threats related to the mayor’s physical properties to ensure its protection.'

According to the Times, officers applying for the mayor's personal detail needed at least five years on the job to be eligible.

Prerequisites for the position included 'experience in providing security and property protection services,' the paper revealed.

Despite the stipulations, however, officers that have since been admitted to Lightfoot's personal outfit were not required to engage in extracurricular training for the gig, CPD officials told the Times Monday.

Shortly before the unit was set up, Lightfoot, who had faced criticism from protesting citizens and even officers for her ties to the then rapidly burgeoning anti-police movement, enlisted cops from the city's Humboldt Park and Logan Square neighborhoods to serves as sentries outside her posh, multimillion-dollar home.

Citizens from the neighborhoods soon noticed how thin the police force in their areas had become, and complained to the city, the Times reported, as crime in the city began to ramp up amid lockdowns and economic uncertainty spurred by the then rampant coronavirus.

In an interview with the Times, Lightfoot said the decision to enlist able-bodied police from the city's embattled force - already spread thin by the pandemic - for her specialized bodyguard detail was not at all related to criticism she faced over her previous use of city officers as security.

'There wasn’t kind of a unified command of the [officers] who were in City Hall, at my house and my [bodyguard] detail,' the Democrat, who moved to Chicago at 24, said.

'The first floor of City Hall was one chain of command, the second floor was different chain of command, the fifth floor [where the mayor’s office is located] was a different chain of command, the house was different and the [bodyguard] detail was different,' she explained.

'We thought, and this is way before the protests or anything else, it just didn’t make sense. Because, you know, if there was some kind of emergency at City Hall, for example, the right hand wouldn’t necessarily know what the left hand was doing because they all reported to different chains of command,' Lightfoot said.

The mayor then brought up how citizens protesting her involvement with the Defund the Police movement - which had soured the politician's relationship with her city's police force, along with her demands that all city workers including cops be vaccinated - made her the target of repeated death threats.

'And then obviously, in 2020 in particular, there were a significant amount of protests all over the city, and some of them targeted at my house,' Lightfoot told the Times Friday.

'All the more reason why having a unified command to understand and share intelligence and be ready to respond if there was any kind of threat was very important.'

The city of Chicago's police department had been increasingly at odds with Lightfoot - a Democrat who publicly supported the 'defund the police movement' after the death of George Floyd in 2020 and slashed the force's budget by $59 million that same year - since she was elected in 2019.

Lightfoot has since denounced the 'defund the police' movement, backtracking in August after the shooting death of Officer Ella French earlier that month, unveiling a new plan to - ironically - ‘refund the police.’

The very next month, in September, Lightfoot unveiled a a $16.7 billion spending plan Monday that boosted funding for the department, lifting the Chicago Police Department's annual budget to $1.9 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 2021.

The plan relied on federal money to help dig the city out of a deficit that reached new heights during Lightfoot's time in office, to $73million and outlined prospective funding new community programs Lightfoot asserted will help the troubled city pull through the ongoing pandemic and address the prevailing issues of gun violence and crime.

At the time, Lightfoot asserted to attendees of a conference discussing the proposed changes that 'we have to make sure we are continuing to provide resources to recruit the next generation of police officers and make sure we’re doing that recruitment in a way that reflects diversity of the city.’

Months later, violent crimes are still up across the board in Chicago, especially since before the start of the pandemic - less than a year after Lightfoot was sworn into office in May 2019.

According to the latest statistics from the Chicago Police Department, Murders are up a whopping 74 percent since 2019 - before the pandemic inspired an influx of crime to plague the city's streets - with 113 killings recorded since the start of the year, compared to the 65 seen in 2019.

Murders are also up since 2020, during the peak of the pandemic, which saw a still concerning 91 murders.

In 2021, the city's murder rate jumped to a high not seen in a quarter of a century, reaching 116 murders within the first three months of the year - just three more than this year.

Violent assaults are also up, with more than 100 more cases of aggravated battery taking place this year than in 2021.

Sexual assaults and rapes are also up this year, with the city recording 12 more incidents this year than this time in 2021.

Small crimes such as theft have also surged since last year, by a whopping 68 percent, from 1,871 incidents to 3,149.

Sex assaults and robberies are also up, increasing by 3 and 11 percent, respectively.

Gun violence, meanwhile -arguably the city's most pressing and prevailing issue - trickled down slightly, from 497 shootings last year to 449 so far in 2022.

However, when compared to shootings seen in 2019, before the city's unprecedented crime wave, the rate of gun violence has increased astronomically, by a concerning 56 percent.