Chicago Mayoral Candidate Garcia Puts Crime at Heart of Race

Tarso Veloso
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- US Representative Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is making public safety in Chicago a top priority for his mayoral campaign as he seeks to replace incumbent Lori Lightfoot.

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Garcia, who is seen as the biggest challenger to Lightfoot, pledged to replace Superintendent David Brown as head of the police department and reduce crime. He also said he’ll focus on increasing police staffing levels and street patrols.

The promises were made during Garcia’s first public campaign event since he announced his bid for mayor at the end of last year. Lightfoot has struggled to keep violence under control, with crime complaints up 41% in 2022 from a year earlier, and up 33% since 2019, the year she took office, police statistics show.

“Chicago’s public safety problems have been decades in the making, and the city will not be made safer overnight,” he said in prepared remarks for his appearance at the City Club of Chicago on Friday. “But there is work that can and should be done immediately.”

Garcia said Brown had failed in leading Chicago’s police department and that he is “not trusted by his officers or by the public.” Under the congressman’s plan, administrative functions will be filled with civilians so that officers can return to patrolling streets.

“Modern effective policing begins on the streets and in our communities, yet less than half of CPD staff is assigned to patrol, often not in the parts of the city where they are most needed,” he said.

Chicago, like many other big American cities, is battling rising crime since the pandemic. The Windy City and its suburbs have also faced a slew of corporate departures that included Citadel, Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. Tyson Foods also said it was closing its local office.

Ken Griffin cited crime in the city as one of the reasons for moving the headquarters of his Citadel hedge fund to Miami last year. At a meeting on Thursday, the billionaire called on New York Mayor Eric Adams to embrace a public safety strategy to prevent the city from going down the same path as Chicago.

Lightfoot criticized Garcia’s plan, arguing that it represented a “sharp turn” from his previous stance aligning himself with the ‘Defund the Police’ movement.

Garcia pledged to restore staffing levels that have dropped sharply since Lightfoot took office, with record number of retirements in recent years, Garcia said. He pledged to hire 1,600 officers.

“I will demand that we use this new hiring as an opportunity to close the gap between the diversity of police personnel and the communities they serve,” he said. “We know that building trust with the community is the path to increasing arrests and convictions for homicides.”

(Updates with Garcia, Lightfoot comments throughout.)

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