Stopping by a Greenway Side Road in the Presence of Sirens and Flashing Lights: The Case of Eagle Trace Drive
Traffic was at a standstill on Eagle Trace Drive, a normally quiet road with a plant-filled median, about a mile and a half from the site. Police vehicles and cars flashed their lights while sirens wailed in the distance.
“I’m never going to get home,” said Cheryl St. James, a nurse, as she sat in her car. I want to return to my hometown. I can’t believe this is happening in my neighborhood. It’s scary.”
The project manager, who has lived in the area for three years, said that he left to get something to eat after he saw the police arrive. Hours later, he was sitting in his car, trying to return, watching “House of the Dragon.” He said he walks on the Greenway but now might think twice about it.
The Rise and Fall of the Law: The New York City Mayor Eric A. Adams’s Crime Against the Censored and the Violent Police
She wants to increase the number of police officers but also wants harsher punishments for abusive officers. She stated in her inaugural address that crimes must be stopped and people held accountable. “Let me be so bold as to add that we can prevent crime and community violence by addressing the social, the health and the economic conditions that compromise a safe environment.”
In New York State last year, Republican candidates in the midterms focused on crime and did much better than usual. Democratic candidates often tried to change the subject. Adams told reporters that those who stated “Don’t talk about crime, it was an insult to Black and brown communities where a lot of this crime was playing out.” Nancy Pelosi told The Times’s Maureen Dowd that Democrats might have maintained control of the House of Representatives if the party’s candidates in New York had taken crime more seriously.
In New York City, Eric Adams won the mayor’s race in 2021 by focusing his campaign on crime. In the Democratic primary, he lost only one of the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan, the wealthiest.
Republicans did well in Oregon last year, where Portland has become a symbol of post-pandemic disorder. Between 2019 and 2022, murders nearly tripled, vandalism incidents nearly doubled and car thefts rose 69 percent.
Karen Bass is the mayor of Los Angeles and her message on crime has become arguably the most successful progressive message. A former community organizer who spent 12 years in the House of Representatives, Bass defeated a more conservative candidate not by downplaying crime concerns but by talking about them frequently. Bass was a crime victim last year.
Vallas, the most conservative candidate, will hire more police officers, while Johnson, the most liberal one, wants to address the root causes of crime.
WASHINGTON: And he has said that he believes that the police need more support. And, in fact, he has said something along the lines of taking the handcuffs off the police to allow them to be more assertive in terms of fighting crime. Brandon Johnson was once a strong supporter of the defund the police movement. He has backed off of that position, but he wants to move more resources into social services, into anti-violence programs. He thinks that more policing is not the answer.
“No matter where you live, no matter what you look like, you deserve to have a better, stronger, safer Chicago,” Johnson said at his election night party last night.
LORI LIGHTFOOT. We were fierce competitors over the last few months, but I will be praying that the next mayor will do his best for the people of this city.
Four years later, the Second City voters demonstrated how much has changed since they voted for Lightfoot in the first place. The election of a mayor in Chicago will test the attitudes of a heavily Democratic electorate towards crime and policing.
The outcome demonstrated the electorates focus on public safety. In 2020 and 2021, there was violence in the city. According to a report by the Chicago Police Department, other crimes have increased since last year, and shootings and murders have decreased since then.
Lori Lightfoot fought bitterly against teachers and police unions in a Chicago mayor’s race: the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic
Paul Vallas, a former schools chief who campaigned on a tough-on-crime message, and Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner with the backing of the influential teachers’ union, advanced to the head-to-head match-up in five weeks.
The city is recovering slowly from the Pandemic. McDonald’s president and chief executive officer Chris Kempczinski said at The Economic Club of Chicago last fall that the chain was struggling to convince potential employees to relocate to work in its West Loop headquarters.
“It just shows up in so many different ways,” he said. It affects us becauseCrime becomes pervasive in peoples’ psyche. Ultimately it is holding all of us back.”
However, the results of 2019’s first round – with the first-place finisher qualifying for the runoff with the support of less than one-in-five Chicago voters – proved to be an omen of Lightfoot’s future difficulties.
She had been elected in an office with a long history of being a political lightning rod without a good base of support. Her tough love on the campaign trail cost her some of the supporters she had befriended on her way to victory.
Most importantly, the pugnacious Lightfoot brawled with teacher and police unions before and during the Covid-19 pandemic – battles that ultimately led both groups to back rivals in the 2023 mayor’s race.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/lori-lightfoot-chicago-mayor-race-crime/index.html
The Mayor’s Runoff Addresses the Problem of Homelessness: The Power of the Coalition? The Case of Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas
The union last fall endorsed Johnson, who was relatively unknown outside his Cook County commission district – propelling him in the nine-candidate field.
The union president said that Chicago is ready to break from the past that ignores the needs of students, families and school communities.
Police were angered by a fight over overtime pay last year when she said officers had an “incredible” amount of time off. It was the latest ugly chapter in years-long tension between police and Lightfoot’s administration as she sought to rein in overtime spending.
The next mayor will be able to install new leadership at the department after Brown’s resignation in March.
Bass defeated Caruso in part by offering her own plans to increase the number of police officers on the streets and declare a state of emergency to address a crisis of homelessness.
In the city, Vallas and Johnson dominated with their strongest areas in the north side, which is mostly White, while Lightfoot dominated with her strongest areas in the south and west.
Johnson, in his celebratory speech Tuesday night, showed the first signs that he will seek to consolidate liberals who supported someone else in the nine-person field. He cited each candidate by name.
He said that he would fight for public safety and also for a city where the trains actually run on time.
CHANG. The year-over-year decline in homicides last year did not excuse the overall increase in crime during her tenure. Is Lightfoot…
WASHINGTON: Well, I think it’s a very complicated issue. The city is dealing with many challenges. The city doesn’t have enough money for anti-violence programs. We just went through a large-scale outbreak of a disease. We went through social unrest around the city. And some of that, I think, is responsible for creating the instability. Voters expect her to be able to be a mayor. They expect her to be able to solve the problem. Crime is still a pretty serious issue. And every day you hear about events and incidents, and people are pointing the finger at her.
CHANG: Well, let’s talk about the candidates who beat Lightfoot to head into the runoff. We have Paul Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, followed by Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson. What are the solutions that they have for improving public safety?
WASHINGTON: A lot of people live in a city that is very diverse. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a segregated city. Whites tend to vote for their white candidates, while people of color vote for other candidates of color. So what you saw in the campaign yesterday was the areas of the city which were predominantly white, more conservative, had more city workers, went to Vallas, and Brandon Johnson got the areas of the city that tended to be populated by more people of color. So there’s a debate around race. There is a debate regarding the haves and have-nots. Brandon Johnson talked about that in his acceptance speech.
WASHINGTON: Paul Vallas would say that he wants to address some of the inequities in the city as well, but his big argument is that we need to get our public safety situation in line first.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. It is possible that accuracy and availability may be different. The audio record is the most reliable for NPR programming.
New York City Mayor Michael Adams: “The State of the Union is the Body, God is the Heart” and “Governing by God’s Grace and Faith”
On Sunday, the New York City Mayor brushed aside the suggestion that the reelection loss of the Chicago Mayor was just a warning sign for Democratic mayors around the country.
“I showed up at crime scenes. I knew what New Yorkers were saying. I witnessed it all over the country. It is really saying that I have been saying this for a long time. Adams spoke to CNN on “State of the Union.”
Adams also addressed the scrutiny that has followed his remarks at an interfaith breakfast last week in which he said, “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body, church is the heart. You take away the heart from the body.
“What I believe,” he said Sunday, “is that you cannot separate your faith. Religion should not interfere with the government. But I believe my faith pushes me forward on how I govern and the things that I do.”