Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel unwittingly prompted a public battle with President Donald Trump on Monday, when he criticized Trump for focusing on the crowd size at his inauguration. On Tuesday evening, coinciding with an “O’Reilly Factor” segment on violence in Chicago, Trump tweeted a veiled threat aimed at Emanuel. 

“If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24 percent from 2016), I will send in the Feds!” Trump tweeted, citing figures that aired on Bill O’Reilly’s show. Official statistics from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) put the numbers a bit lower, at 234 people shot, and 38 killed. In 2016, a department spokesman said, 227 were shot, with 33 deaths. The spokesman said the department’s figures do not factor in “justified” shootings (those in self-defense) or officer-involved shootings.

Emanuel’s verbal spat with Trump stemmed from a bit of criticism he lodged at the president on Monday: “You didn’t get elected to debate the crowd size at your inaugural,” the mayor said, referring to Trump’s insistence that his inauguration ceremony was the most-watched ever. “You got elected to make sure that people have a job, that the economy continues to grow, people have security as it relates to their kids’ education. It wasn’t about your crowd size. It was about their lives and their jobs.”

On Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said his department was “more than willing” to work with the federal government to combat Chicago’s persistent violence. Chicago had a bloody 2016. The death toll was the highest in nearly two decades, at 762 people killed, largely the result of gang violence.

Days before U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch left office, her department released its findings that the CPD “engages in a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.” The Justice Department also found a pattern of racial discrimination practiced by Chicago officers.

On Wednesday, a Chicago Democrat, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, came to Emanuel’s defense. “The president wants publicity and to be seen beating up on Democratic elected officials and appearing hostile to a big city like Chicago in the eyes of his suburban and rural voters,” he said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Minutes before midnight on Monday evening, many teachers in Chicago breathed a collective sigh of relief: there would be no strike, and their classes would go on as planned on Tuesday. After over a year of testy negotiations, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) struck a four-year contract with the school board. While it won’t officially be cemented until it’s ratified by the CTU’s House of Delegates and voted on by members, the agreement staved off a looming strike, which could have kept over 300,000 Chicago students out of school.

At a press conference after the deal was reached, and following 12 hours of discussions, CTU President Karen Lewis said the agreement is “good for kids, is good for clinicians, is good for paraprofessionals, for teachers, for the community.”

For Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the last minute consensus was a welcome refuge during a politically turbulent time. The relationship between Chicago residents and police officers has frayed under his leadership, and a strike, which would have been the second CTU strike of his tenure, would have been fuel for the flames.

“Chicago Public Schools’ finances will be stronger and on firmer ground because of this agreement,” Emanuel said at a post-midnight press conference. “Parents and taxpayers will be relieved, and more importantly, reassured, that we all came together to work together with a common purpose.”

The contract includes a pension pick-up for teachers, a key concern for the union; a promise to cap classroom sizes for kindergarten through second grade; and millions of dollars in funding to help offset cuts to teacher salaries and a number of school services.

Both sides narrowly avoided what would have been the second strike of Emanuel’s six years in office. The first came in 2012, when the union and the board wrangled over the previous contract. That strike lasted seven days.

Union members were preparing for a strike in the hours leading up to the midnight agreement. They picked up materials–shirts, twine, and signs–at designated areas around the city, and were instructed to strike outside of their schools at 6 AM on Tuesday. A union strike is legal, according to Illinois law, only if more than 75 percent of members authorize abstaining from work. According to the union, 88 percent of members agreed to the Tuesday strike.

Negotiations were successful, however, ensuring students could go back to school, teachers could go back to work, and Emanuel, for the time being, could escape another political fallout.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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During the first presidential debate, Donald Trump made a point of citing violence in Chicago but failed to recognize Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s new plan for fighting violent crime in the city. The plan is broken into three categories: enforcement, investment, and prevention. But will it actually be effective?

The enforcement step of the plan has received the most attention as it involves hiring almost 1,000 new beat cops, detectives, and supervisors (and outfitting them with new squad cars and equipment). Emanuel has pledged not to raise taxes to pay for the expansion of the police force but it is unclear how he plans to fund these new hires. Hiring will begin as soon as January, so the approximately $135 million necessary to fund this wave of new police hires will have to show up quickly if Emanuel wants to make good on his promise.

Although adding officers to the force is an admirable step for a city where the police force has been stretched thin, there are doubts regarding whether Emanuel’s new hires will be enough to seriously impact Chicago. It is not so much the number of officers who are available as it is their training and interaction with the community that will shape attempts to curb violent crime throughout the metropolitan area. Besides concerns that the plan will be ineffective, critics have also stepped forward to argue that this plan gives Mayor Emanuel too much power, as it interferes with the independence of the police force. These objections are largely linked to the establishment of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which would have the power to investigate alleged police misconduct to a much greater extent than in the past. The mayor will appoint most of the employees of this investigative agency, which has led community members to question its impartiality and ability to break away from the failures of the Independent Police Review Authority, the agency that it will be replacing.

The mayor unveiled his plan during a speech which was notable not for its rhetoric about improving policing but for what it lacked–there were virtually no references to improving the racial divide between the police force and minority communities. The mayor did not address the issues with predictive policing or this summer’s protests against police brutality in Chicago. The majority of both homicide perpetrators and victims in Chicago are black, and gang membership in the city is primarily concentrated among black and Latino populations. Although one should never jump to the same simplistic conclusion that Trump used in the first debate, implying that all minority citizens of Chicago live in violent squalor, it is undeniable that the black community has seen the largest share of violence in the city. Mayor Emanuel touted mentorship programs and family interventions as solutions to violence in Chicago neighborhoods but he did not go any further to discuss how community leaders can dissuade young people from joining gangs, buying guns, or being injured during violent confrontations with police officers. Community policing is a two-way street: police officers have to be trained but there needs to be community outreach as well. If neither side is being provided with directions and tools on how to improve their relations, will anything really change in Chicago?

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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