Some police officers in Chicago say that new requirements for conducting citizen stops have led to the deadliest January in more than a decade, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The city saw a spike in gun violence in 2015 and cited the "Ferguson effect," making an argument that heightened scrutiny on law enforcement officials after a black teenager was shot by a white officer in Missouri in 2014 led to a wave of violent crime.
Some officers, who were not named by the Sun-Times, told the newspaper that the Chicago Police Department's agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is contributing to the city's higher crime rates.
As of January, officers have to complete more extensive forms documenting each time they stop a citizen. They told the Sun-Times that they make fewer stops now because of the risk that later it will be decided an incident was illegal.
They completed 79 percent fewer documentations of stops this January than the same period in 2015 and saw the deadliest January since 2001.
In statistics released Monday, the department reported there were 51 homicides last month compared to 29 in January of last year. Also, the number of shooting incidents and total shooting victims more than doubled; there 242 shooting incidents compared to 119 such incidents recorded in January 2015, and 292 shooting victims including the 51 who died, compared to 136 in the same month last year.
Karen Sheley, director of police practices for the ACLU of Illinois, released a statement saying that the ACLU has found no correlation between fewer stops and more violence.
For more than a year, politicians, researchers and law enforcement officials have debated "Ferguson effect" claims.
According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, the available data does not prove that crime is increasing. In 2015, homicides increased in several midsized American and Chicago, but the increases were consistent with year-to-year fluctuations.
In November, Chicago was forced to deal with one of the biggest crises in the police department's history — and of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's political career— sparked by the release of a video showing a white officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. Officer Jason Van Dyke has since been charged with murder in the incident, Superintendent Garry McCarthy has been fired and the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation into the department.
But whether the release of the video has contributed to the dramatic increase in homicides and shooting incidents in January remains unclear.
AP reports were used in this article
