Shifting Sentiments: Public Opinion on Policing in Chicago
David Calahan 
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Did you know that, currently, Chicago’s most underprivileged, historically targeted, and over-policed communities have begun to show improved sentiments towards the Chicago Police Department (CPD)? Did you know that Chicago’s most wealthy, favored, and protected communities have shown sentiments moving in the opposite direction?
In 2018, CPD partnered with survey company Elucd to collect information from Chicagoans on two points of interest concerning policing: trust and safety. While the scores calculated from the monthly surveys provide only a tentative foundation for the much larger structure of public sentiments, they are still helpful for identifying how attitudes are shifting over time. Recent changes of interest are improved sentiments towards the police from South Side residents, and diminished appraisals from residents on the North Side.
On the South Side, positive shifts have occurred despite CPD’s often abusive history with the communities within it and despite the recent national and more wholesale condemnation of policing institutions aroused by the murders of, and subsequent protests for, victims like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. These surprising shifts might reflect substantive changes in how CPD and Chicago officials treat South Side residents.
The 2020 Our City, Our Safety Our City, Our Safety plan developed by the Chicago Mayor’s Office budgeted $412 million to introduce or improve violence prevention activities, support network intervention activities, community building organizations, and relationship-based policing in 10 of Chicago’s most underprivileged areas. The funding provided by this plan, in addition to similar, small-scale initiatives, have seemingly improved South Side residents’ quality of life and their interactions with CPD officials. According to CPD data , shootings in Area 4, which includes two of South Chicago’s most dangerous districts, are down 25% in 2022 while murders in the area have fallen by nearly a third compared to 2021. With safer streets and more supportive policing South Side residents’ sentiments towards the police improved. This change in quality of life has been so significant that even young residents have taken notice. In a study currently being conducted by Cintia Hinojosa, when asked about the state of their neighborhood, one Chicago Public Schools student responded:
Okay, sometime back, our neighborhood was not safe at all. People used to carry guns around small kids doing drugs and stuff like that. So literally, I guess a number of guns are off the streets. The youth here have gotten something better to do with their lives, rather than drugs. And, yeah, I guess we’re maintaining peace…A lot of community-based organizations have been formed and let’s also say the neighbors are willing to cooperate with the government. That is, when it comes to ratting out those people that have those guns with themselves.
Simultaneously, many North Side residents have voiced concerns about increased crime. In reality, North Side crime rates are among the lowest they have been in decades according to a data analysis conducted by Crain’s Chicago Business:
The North Side is as safe as it’s been in a generation, with a homicide rate that has declined steadily throughout this century, barely ticking up during the especially violent years of 2016 and 2020, then falling again in 2021
Despite the absence of a huge crime wave, negative (mis-)perceptions work to undermine public sentiments towards the police on the North Side. On the South Side, distrust of police was already commonplace, so the massive protests that erupted in 2020 likely only served to reaffirm commonly held beliefs. While South Side residents would have seen the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd as two tragic additions to a long list of police atrocities, the largely white middle-to-high income North Side residents likely had their consciousness raised about such human rights violations, and, as a result, became less favorable of the police in general.
With the understanding of why these shifts have occurred, moving forward, city and CPD officials should aim to continue funding the implementation of the Our City, Our Safety plan on the South Side. On the North Side, they should aim to correct mis-perceptions by promoting accurate information: social media announcements about corruption reduction (potentially with the support of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability), articles discussing reduced crime rates, advertisements highlighting crime reduction initiatives, etc. Achieving these goals will allow CPD to continue improving their Elucd scores on the South Side, and restore their decreased scores on the North.
The Public Policy Studies major at the University of Chicago attracts scores of excellent undergraduate students. All of these students take part in a capstone experience in their senior year. A new option for the capstone experience is the Policy Project Seminar, a one-quarter course devoted to honing policy analysis and communication skills. The theme adopted for the inaugural Autumn 2022 Project Seminar was “Chicago Through a Policy Lens.” The Chicago Policy Review is pleased to present this op-ed as part of our “Outside Voices” series.
