Democrat Under Fire For Refusal To Report Crimes

(IntegrityPress.org) – A Chicago politician has announced a new approach to crime in the city: she will no longer tell her constituents about it.

Democrat Alderman Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth has announced that for the next six months she will no longer send social media and emailed updates on crime in her district as standard. Instead, interested parties can sign up to her emails and opt in to receive crime updates. She has, however, stated that she will continue to inform the public about immediate threats such as active shooters or bomb threats.

Her change in communications comes as crimes such as shootings and sexual assault continue to increase in her ward. The 48th Ward has seen robberies increase by 78% compared to last year, while sexual assault has hit highest levels since 2012. Between May 22 and May 27, four men were shot in her ward in three different incidents.

Manaa-Hoppenworth said that her constituents did not wish to receive “every single alert about a gunshot”. She also said that her decision was in keeping with her values of “anti-racism and community”. The alderman also claimed that “over-reporting” of crime has a negative impact on marginalized communities and that reporting crime resulted in greater “surveillance” and more police in the affected area. Manaa-Hoppenworth said that an increased police presence did not necessarily make the area safer and that anti-crime efforts must “go deeper”, although she did not specify what that meant.

The 48th Ward is not alone in experiencing an increase in violent crimes. Chicago as a whole has seen crime rates for vehicle theft, sexual assault, battery, robbery, and theft all increase since 2020, although murder rates have dropped since then. While crime has risen in recent years, the number of arrests made has dropped. The rate of arrests dropped in 2023 to half the level in 2013, with only 10.8% of violent crimes resulting in any arrest.

Despite a recent poll finding that 75% of Chicagoans want their city to have a larger police force, the police have been subject to significant budget cuts. Mayor Brandon-Johnson’s recent budget resulted in the loss of more than 800 beat officer positions. The city’s Board of Education also voted to take police officers out of schools, even if those schools asked to retain their officers.