CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Around 200 residents showed up for a community safety meeting Monday night at The Moody Church in Old Town.
2nd ward alderman Brian Hopkins called the safety forum after the unrest that took place last Wednesday night along North Avenue between the Gold Coast and Old Town to talk about crime prevention.
“I believe that we actually have what we need to solve the problem of increased criminal activity in our neighborhood,” Hopkins told residents.
Among the solutions pitched by Hopkins were more cameras, more license plate readers, more police and more residents calling 9-1-1. But, he said those calls are not always responded to in an immediate manner.
“During the incident downtown where he had hundreds of people in Millennium Park, resources were taken away from our neighborhood to respond to what was happening downtown,” Hopkins noted.
He said there was a backlog Saturday night of up to three hours.
“We had people calling 9-1-1 for legitimate reasons, burglar alarms going off, batteries in progress, broken windows, fights, traffic accidents, and it was taking up to three hours for a police car to respond to those calls because of the drain on resources that was happening in the downtown area,” added Hopkins.
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He said the neighborhood already has the three requisite things: a committed citizenry, organized neighborhood associations, and a committed police department. But going into the community meeting on safety only two of those elements were present.
“The neighbors are here, the neighborhood association is here. The leaders of the 18th District Police Department are not here, and the reason they are not here is because 15 minutes ago there was another shooting in our neighborhood,” said Hopkins.
18th district Commander John Hein did arrive about an hour and a half into the two hour town hall but many of the residents left feeling underwhelmed, telling WBBM that they did not seem to hear any answers to preventing incidents like what happened in the neighborhood last week.
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