The People’s Plan for Community Safety is the Johnson administration’s driving strategy to make Chicago safer.
So, what is the strategy and how does it plan to make an impact on Chicago’s crime and violence?
The People’s Plan for Community Safety is a hyperlocal, two-pronged strategy launched last year that focuses on investing resources in both people and places, according to the plan. It uses a triage approach to focus on the communities that need investment and resources the most, and will focus on specific blocks in Austin, Englewood, West Garfield Park and South Lawndale/Little Village.
“We know that building blocks for safety, particularly in Austin, are different than the building blocks that we’re going to need in Englewood,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson during a public meeting for the plan earlier this month. “It’s time to make sure that the people closest to the pain are part of the solutions, that time is now.”
Deputy Mayor of Community Safety Garien Gatewood, who leads the work, said the team wants to create a new, holistic approach to public safety that embeds the work within communities. It strives to collaborate with city departments, community leaders and organizations and members of the community to reduce crime and violence on both the front-end and root-cause fronts.
“The reason why is because there are areas and communities that have not had the necessary investments that other communities have seen,” Gatewood told Austin Weekly News. “It shouldn’t matter if you are in Ravenswood or Englewood. You should have the same level of safety and the same level of access to resources.”
The plan intends to address public safety issues with a place-based and people-based approach.
Under the place-based approach, the strategy will tackle the root-causes of violence, including poverty, trauma and disinvestment. The approach will focus on creating new education and career opportunities and safe and affordable housing. It will also focus on expanding health services, creating “safe spaces” in the community and building trust with police.
The people-based side of the plan aims to interrupt violence by supporting people who are impacted by crime and violence the most. Immediate intervention strategies include supporting adults and youth of the “highest promise” by expanding community violence intervention and improving youth-outreach and support. The plan also considers victims and survivors of violence by offering immediate trauma support for both people that have been victims and those who have caused harm, according to the plan.
Area snapshot
In Austin, the plan targets two block groups, including a swath of land bounded by Madison Street, Adams Street, Laramie Avenue and Lavergne Avenue. The second is is bounded by West End Avenue, Madison, Laramie and Lavergne.
Four block groups will receive interventions in West Garfield Park. They are Madison to Lexington by Kenton Avenue/Kolmar to Kostner Avenue; Adams to the Eisenhower Expressway by Kostner Avenue to Keeler Avenue; Adams to the Eisenhower by Kostner to Pulaski Road; and Jackson Boulevard to Harrison Street by Pulaski to Hamlin Boulevard.
To select these areas, Gatewood said the office used data that included rates of high school diplomas, rent burdening, median income, unemployment and school closures. They layered these social and economic factors with crime statistics, including data about the most violent beats and number of 911 calls, shootings and homicides.
Gatewood said the most divested and violent areas of the city are on the West Side, where Black and Hispanic or Latino people make up the majority of the population. For example, Black residents make up 72.8% of the 96,753 people who live in Austin, and Hispanic or Latino residents make up 19.6%, according to 2020 census figures. Black residents make up 91.9% of the population in West Garfield Park.
According to data from the city’s violence reduction dashboard, the homicide rate in Austin increased 13.5% from Jan. 1 through Oct. 13 over the same time the year before. While the number of shootings fell 7.2%, the number of those who died from shootings grew 12.1%. Aggravated battery grew by 8.3% in the timeframe. Still, some areas saw improvements: Carjackings dropped 16.1% and robberies fell 6.3%.
“We then took 50 school closures and layered it on top of Chicago Police Department’s most violent beats throughout the city,” Gatewood told Austin Weekly News. “Once we layered all of these things together on the map, it was obvious to us that some of the most violent areas in the city, and not just violent, but some of the most disinvested areas in the city —because disinvestment leads to violence — were on the West Side. That comes as no surprise to a lot of folks.”
Taking action
Since debuting the plan in December, the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety has launched two pilot-programs under the strategy.
The “Take Back the Block” initiative took place over the summer, where Johnson and his cabinet came to neighborhoods and engaged with community members. Trash was removed, and streetlights and sidewalks were repaired and cleaned, Gatewood said.
The second program, the mass-shooting victim rapid-response protocol, is an initiative that supplies resources and services to victims of mass shootings and children who were victims of shootings.
Resources have included a mental health mobile-bus from the Broader Urban Involvement and Leadership Development or BUILD, community resource centers and emergency assistance centers. Gatewood said between Memorial Day and Labor Day, his office sent out the bus 40 times.
Earlier in October, Johnson announced three of the four anchor organizations, or “community conveners,” that will be working within the census block groups.
The Westside Branch Chicago NAACP will be the community leader that will partner with the Mayor’s Office as an anchor for their work in Austin. In Englewood, Teamwork Englewood, and Beyond the Ball in South Lawndale.
Johnson said the fourth anchor-organization, for West Garfield Park, will be announced later.
These organizations will not just help drive violence rates down, Gatewood said, but will help drive the “quality of life up.”
“We’re going to continue our rapid response work, but we will always continue to move our root-cause work forward because if we don’t, 10 years from now, two other folks will be in our position having the same conversation,” Gatewood said. “We owe it to the city not to let that happen.”
