Chicago cops make record-low arrests as crime soars

Embattled Chicago cops are making a record-low number of arrests — even as violent crimes soar to record highs, according to alarming data.

Arrests were made in just 12% of crimes reported last year, the lowest since 2001 when the data was first made public, according to an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times.

It marks a dramatic drop off from previous years, with the arrest rate almost 20% higher in 2005 — at 31%, the paper noted.

The pullback is even more concerning because it came as the Windy City was rocked by one of its most violent years in decades – with the 797 homicides last year setting a 25-year record.

The murder rate was up 3% in 2021 compared with 2020 and criminal sexual assault was up a disturbing 27%, according to crime statistics.

Compared to pre-pandemic and pre-Black Lives Matter 2019, murder skyrocketed 60% in 2021.

Homicides are tracking down again in Chicago, dropping 14% so far this year, compared to this time last year — however, crime overall in the Democrat-run city is up 34%, according to the latest figures.

The decline in arrests last year wasn’t just related to violent crime. The drop was seen across the board with fewer tickets and stops too – 69,000 “investigative stops” were made where people were searched on the streets, representing less than half the 155,000 recorded in 2019, the paper noted.

Police insiders blamed woke reforms implemented haphazardly in response to cops taking heat for shooting armed suspects in chases – even when they face imminent danger.

One beat cop told the Sun-Times that the deadly shooting of officer Ella French last year “make us take a step back and think: Who really cares about us at that point?”

“We can only support each other at the lowest ranks,” the officer says. “And if that means going out there and not doing anything, then that means going out there and not doing anything,” he said.

The same beat cop also complained that prosecutors now have such high thresholds to approve felony charges that officers second-guess when to engage “criminals with guns.”

That sentiment was shared by veteran cops who also said that previously routine actions now carry the risk of disciplinary action, including termination and even arrest.

“In the past, I might see a guy with a gun in his waistband, and I’d jump out and chase him … No way I’d do that now,” one decorated officer told the paper.

One academic blamed “The Ferguson Effect,” named for the rise in violent crime in the St. Louis suburb where police pulled back amid protests over the fatal police shooting of black teen Michael Brown in August 2014.

That then escalated with the swell of anti-police sentiment in 2020.

“It’s entirely possible that the murder of George Floyd, the highest-profile [police killing] in US history, played a role in increases in crime,” crime statistics researcher Deepak Premkumar told the paper.

Chicago Alderman Ray Lopez, however, blamed the startlingly low numbers of arrests on police Supt. David Brown as well as progressive Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has had cops turn their backs on her.

Together, they have “driven away officers” and caused “a personnel crisis within the department,” Lopez told the Sun-Times.

It is a self-perpetuating problem, he said, noting that “as fewer arrests are made, the legitimacy of law enforcement gets questioned” — and people “see that you can get away with almost anything in this city right now and not get caught.”

“Refusal to recognize that fact only makes Chicago all the more dangerous,” he warned.

Lightfoot admitted many of the issues cops complain about.

“Is this a difficult time to be the police? No question,” the divisive mayor told the Sun-Times.

“Are there officers that are concerned about being that next viral video? No question,” she said.

However, she downplayed the suggestion of a work stoppage, insisting that officers are “still running towards danger.”

Meanwhile, top cop Brown also dismissed the arrest data, saying higher rates from earlier years merely reflected a troubled era typified by “stopping and frisking” and mass incarcerating people of color.

“I’ve been doing this 40 years, and the highest arrest rates in the ‘80s and ‘90s did not make us safer,” the superintendent insisted.

“It was a flawed policing model,” he said.