Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel DESPERATE to lower NEGRO VIOLENCE - In overtime move, more CPD officers allowed to work in home districts

In an effort to improve its relationship with minority communities, the Chicago Police Department will allow more officers to earn extra pay in the parts of the South and West sides where they already regularly work, a police spokesman said Monday.

The strategy will mark the retooling of the department's "violence reduction initiative," an overtime program that calls for several hundred officers each day to work on their days off in some of the most violence-plagued parts of the city.

The change comes as Chicago has seen some of its worst violence since the late 1990s. It is on the heels of a weekend that saw nearly 60 people shot throughout Chicago for the second weekend in a row. From Friday afternoon through early Monday morning, 58 people were shot, seven of them fatally.

The idea of the new overtime strategy is to have officers earn the extra pay in areas of the city they know the best — a nod to the department’s mission to restore trust with African-American and Hispanic communities, said Anthony Guglielmi, a police spokesman.

"While working overtime, the officers will already be familiar with the streets they patrol, and they will be able to continue to build relationships with residents and community leaders in the neighborhoods they regularly work," he said.

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