A Call to Revolutionize Policing
How can we live in a city where a young female police officer is shot and killed on her way home from the night shift and no one calls 911? Where it takes police over 30 minutes to respond to a ShotSpotter alert?
That horrific incident has plagued Anthony Driver since he attended her funeral. He still wears a memorial button with her picture as a reminder of the “deep trouble” we’re in as a city.
Driver, president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), is the man charged with overseeing the search for Chicago’s new police chief and presenting the top three candidates to Mayor Brandon Johnson on July 14. He was a panelist with Mecole Jordan-McBride and Robert Boik at the City Club of Chicago’s May 23 luncheon meeting on the importance of community policing.
“It really personifies how deep trouble is that we’re in, where you can lose somebody that is so bright and has so much to offer our city on one hand [and] on the other hand, they’re backlogged so badly that nobody can respond to it for 30 minutes,” Driver said.
The circumstances of the shooting need to generate conversations in the community as well as the police department for better ways to reduce city violence, he added. Watch the full presentation.