CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- With summer coming, Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot is turning up the heat on Chicago police.
Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot said the city and the police department needed to be better prepared for spring break when hundreds of teenagers organized on social media and converged on the downtown area and North Michigan Avenue.
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"Obviously, I don't think anyone anticipated what's trending on Facebook; there were going to be hundreds of kids gathering in the downtown area, but that is where you need to be prepared and have a plan," she said.
Lightfoot met Monday with Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, State's Attorney Kim Foxx, Sheriff Tom Dart, and U.S. Attorney John Lausch discussing proactive approaches to summer violence.
On Tuesday, Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson outlined the strategy to deal with violence this summer and disagreed with Mayor-Elect Lori Lightfoot that the department wasn’t prepared for roving bands of teens causing trouble downtown last week.
Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said he is expecting the usual uptick in violence this summer.
"We will implement crime-fighting strategies, leveraging our tech and data-driven police efforts to help our leaders deploy their resources at the right places, at the right times," he said.
Johnson said there are three key components: "deployment of bike teams in entertainment districts and high foot traffic areas, the summer CTA unit and summer mobile patrols to high priority areas."
As for criticism from Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot regarding wilding teenagers, Johnson said, "in terms of what happened, we knew those kids were coming down there, so the police department, I will tell you...it was no accident that we had that large presence down there."
The department, he said, can always do better, but it was prepared.