By Ryan Cordero, Loyola Sophomore
The Chicago Police Department recently held its monthly CAPS meeting in the city’s Edgewater neighborhood, and the encouraging news was that there was little crime to report.
“It’s kind of amazing how no one really has any questions or much to report”, said Jane Lucius, president of Neighbors of Edgewater West, one of the people in attendance.
The Chicago Police host the monthly Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy meetings as a way to share news and listen to residents of each neighborhood. Edgewater, on the city’s Far North Side, is part of police Beat 2433.
The meeting is hosted every third Tuesday of the month by Officer Heather Hardy and Officer Shoaib Ghalib in order to keep the residents or Edgewater informed and updated.
Once the meeting started, everyone introduced themselves and a chart comparing the number of crimes in the neighborhood since the last meeting was shared to the viewers.
There was a striking difference between the amount of theft crimes reported; The previous month showed 31 cases of theft, compared with 11 cases in the current period.
“I think with the weather, we haven’t had much going on,” Hardy said.
Although most of the patrons of the meeting did not have much to comment, Michael Bucci, a resident of Edgewater, wanted to discuss a carjacking that took place on January 26. The city has been hit with a spate of carjackings in recent months.
Hardy said there were arrests in the January carjacking in Edgewater.
“They did some arrests. It was a crew of younger kids, and I know they cleared up quite a bit [of carjacking cases] in the 24th district,” Hardy said.
She followed up this statement with the assertion, “Carjackings [in our district] have dropped significantly since [the crew] have been caught.”
