Local Police Beef up Patrols Starting This Weekend

Starting this weekend, police say they’re launching a new initiative that will put more officers on the streets where people party the hardest.

Referred to as a new “entertainment detail,” 19th District Commander Elias Voulgaris, Capt. Mike Ryan and Sgt. Jason Clark have spent months making the rounds to various Lake View neighborhood meetings explaining the reasoning behind the boost.

“The overnight shift is always the least staffed throughout the city because things like contract rights and people don’t really want to be on it,” Voulgaris said. “But we’re beefing up that late-night shift. … There will also be a quality of life car where their sole role is to handle drinkers, people urinating in the public way.

“I’m all talk right now, and I understand that, but once you see this stuff up and running, you’ll see us trying to focus on these entertainment venues,” Voulgaris continued. “We just have more liquor licenses than any other police district.”

The boost in the number of officers comes not from hiring more bodies, but from shifting them around. Clark said when the 19th and 23rd Districts merged in the fall, the “numbers were a little off.” The department’s new shifts started on Jan. 6, and beginning this weekend, so will the new entertainment detail.

“I’m all talk right now, and I understand that, but once you see this stuff up and running, you’ll see us trying to focus on these entertainment venues.” 

Officers will reportedly focus on North Halsted Street in Boystown, Clark Street in Wrigleyville and the area surrounding the Belmont CTA train station, among other locations. The three hot spots are no strangers to crime, and are consistently listed as the top three areas for incidents in crime heat maps of Lake View.

The new entertainment detail, however, isn’t the only thing Lake View officials are doing to curb crime. Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) recently passed a ban on new liquor licenses on certain streets surrounding the Belmont CTA train station, and has been actively pursuing new legislation to control bar crawls.

Businesses on North Halsted even to supplement existing patrol officers along the popular nighttime corridor during the summer months.

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But even more than added security, both Clark and Voulgaris say people need to be smart, and “don’t be a victim.”

“In this area, you have the victim, you have the opportunity and you have the location,” Voulgaris said. “Bad guys know that. They know they can come here to find a place to break into. They know with our large entertainment area that they can find someone around here who’s a little intoxicated or walking with their headphones in through an alley. … We’re trying to get the word out: Don’t be a victim.”

The commander added that shuffling officers to take on nighttime responsibilities where people party doesn’t mean they’re still not focusing on neighborhood areas. He said this new team’s purpose is to have more bodies in those higher-risk areas so police don’t have to pull officers from the neighborhoods to respond to incidents.

The new push for nighttime policing comes after both Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced the revitalization of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) to include more executive decisions from district commanders like Voulgaris.

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