Mayor Lori Lightfoot Is Executing Her Plan to Improve Public Safety

HI INDIA NEWS DESK
CHICAGO, IL – At the first mayoral debate tonight, opponents are tossing around borrowed policy proposals, empty promises, and slick one-liners, especially when it comes to tackling public safety — but Mayor Lori Lightfoot is actually doing the work to reduce crime and make Chicago safer for all residents.

For Mayor Lightfoot, nothing is more important than safety in our neighborhoods, and that’s why she is “invest[ing] more money in public safety than the mayors before her” to address the “root causes of crime” and make Chicago the “safest big city in the country.”

While her opponents are all talk, Mayor Lightfoot is hard at work implementing aggressive short-term and long-term strategies to make every neighborhood safer — and her plan is working. Her ongoing Safer Chicago Plan includes:

• Increasing the Chicago Police Department’s budget by $64 million in 2023 to a total of nearly $2 billion;

• Removing more than 12,700 illegal guns from Chicago streets in 2022 — more than any other police department in the country;

• Hiring more than 950 new officers in 2022, even amid a nationwide police staffing shortage;

• Creating the Mayor’s Office of Violence Reduction to drive a proactive approach to preventing violence and support impacted communities;

• Investing $25 million to launch the first “citywide strategic plan” to address gender-based violence and human trafficking; and more.

• Increasing funding for street outreach and community approaches to violence reduction by 1400%; and

• Launching the Community Safety Coordination Center to coordinate every city agency — not just the police — to address the root causes of violence.