CHICAGO, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Mayor Richard M. Daley did not want Chicago saddled with the dubious distinction of being the U.S. murder capital for a second consecutive year.
"That was one of the mayor's edicts," Police Superintendent Phil Cline said. "He did not want to be No. 1 in homicides."
The mayor's edict aside, Chicago is on pace to record fewer than 500 homicides in 2004, its lowest homicide toll in 38 years. Chicago had 395 homicides in 1965.
As of Tuesday the city had counted 445 killings, 145 fewer than the same time last year when the Windy City led the nation in homicides with 590, surpassing New York, which has nearly three times the population.
Chicago ended 2003 with 599 homicides, the most in the country.
Using a barrage of charts, graphs and maps, Cline credited innovative policing strategies like electronic surveillance and targeted response for a historic near 25-percent decline in the number of homicides.
Cline was not reticent about giving credit for crime-busting advice he received from other big-city police departments, including New York and Los Angeles.
"Move officers, not boundaries," he said. "In other words don't realign your beats. You're better off having a force that you can move quickly to where your problems are happening. And that's what we've done with TRU -- the Targeted Response Unit."
Targeted response sent platoons of hundreds of police officers, including some with desk jobs, scrambling back on the street after each report of a shooting in the city.
The overwhelming police response was noticed by the gangs and other bad guys, and street violence cooled down. Criminals saw their internecine turf battles were no longer low priority.
Another strategy: moveable surveillance camera pods mounted on light poles monitored drug trafficking in some of the city's the toughest neighborhoods giving offices a new set of eyes on street corners.
The pods could report the sound of gunshots within seconds and with new technology upgrades next year will allow operators in the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications to determine the source of a firearms discharge within a few feet almost anywhere inside the city limits.
The city has ordered more of the moveable cameras -- which are encased in bulletproof metal housings with police markings and flashing blue lights -- for a massive expansion of street surveillance using more than 2,000 cameras on both public and private property.
The surveillance system, the most sophisticated of any city in the world, will allow operators at the 9-1-1 Center to pull up a camera shot near the site of emergency situations.
Still, Cline says no innovation, electronic or tactical, has proven more helpful in fighting crime than concerned citizens who actively participate in the department's successful community policing program.
"People come forward and give us information," Cline said. "We ask people. They come to your beat meetings. You can give information confidentially. We don't need your name. You can call 9-1-1 and give us (license) plate numbers and information like that. All that helps us in our investigations."
Other violent crimes including criminal sexual assault, aggravated assault, robbery and arson also were down this year, but there was a slight increase in vehicle theft.
"Our progress has been remarkable," said Cline, a career CPD officer promoted to superintendent in 2002. "We have better targeted our resources to where they are needed most. We can't become complacent."
Cline, a veteran gang crimes commander, consolidated gang-intelligence units and put double the number of officers on the street to stop killings before they were carried out. It worked. Gang-related homicides declined from 50 percent of all murders to 40 percent, and gang-intelligence officers broke up a major gang drug operation in a South Side housing project.
Detectives solved 8 percent more homicide cases this year, including a dozen gang-related killings that involved drugs, illegal guns and money.
Officers seized 10,438 guns, an increase of 5 percent.
The department analyzes gang and drug activity weekly and designates high-crime zones in each of the 25 police districts for special attention. Homicides fell 55 percent in the notorious drug-riddled Harrison District on the West Side. Chicago police brass also meet with suburban police chiefs on a regular basis to coordinate crime-fighting.
"We're policing smarter," said Cline. "Our success is based on what doesn't happen. When an expected retaliatory shooting doesn't happen, we've done our job."
The next goal is to reduce the number of domestic-abuse and child-abuse homicides. The city will begin with a public-awareness program on domestic violence advising mothers to be careful who watches their children.
Chicago isn't the only major city with a significant drop in crime. New York had 558 homicides through Sunday, 4.8 percent fewer than the same time a year ago, continuing a trend that has seen homicides decrease 70 percent since the height of the crack-cocaine epidemic in 1993.
The Big Apple could end 2004 with fewer than 600 homicides for the third year in a row. Overall serious crime in New York was down 4.6 percent, except for grand larceny.
Preliminary FBI statistics show the homicide rate in cities with more than 1 million population decreased an average 8.7 percent this year. Violent crime decreased 2 percent and property crime 1.9 percent during the first six months of 2004.
Security experts say falling crime may be an unexpected benefit from the massive increase in spending for homeland security and counter-terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"The emphasis on homeland security has had a chilling effect even on the common street criminal because robbery is also down by 5 percent," sociologist Rosemary Erickson, president of Athena Research Corp., told the New York Daily News.
Chicago police officials have praised initiatives such as the federal Project Safe Neighborhoods, an anti-gun program that counsels ex-offenders released from prison, and the anti-violence group Ceasefire, which reaches out to gang members. Funding for both programs is in jeopardy.
Denver is on the wrong side of the trend. Detectives are trying to figure out why the Mile High City has 97 homicides so far this year, an increase of nearly 50 percent from the 67 last year.
The Denver Post said only 15 percent of Denver's homicides were gang-related. There have been only eight domestic homicides. The killings of eight homeless people, 14 women considered murder suspects and three dead babies thrown in the trash were keeping homicide officers working overtime.
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