Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today publicly blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s crime-fighting strategy and the quality of the public schools he controls, then quickly walked back the remarks.
The Democratic leader said her criticism was targeted at society as a whole and not the mayor personally, much as she did last summer when she harshly criticized former President Ronald Reagan for his role in the war on drugs.
The comments about Emanuel came during a question-and-answer session during a luncheon at the Union League Club. Preckwinkle was asked how to address Chicago violence.
“Clearly, this mayor and this police chief have decided the way in which they are going to deal with the terrible violence that faces our community is just arrest everybody,” Preckwinkle said. “I don’t think in the long term that’s going to be successful.
“We’re going to have to figure out how to have interventions that are more comprehensive than just police interventions in the communities where we have the highest rates of crime. And they’re almost all in African-American and Latino communities.”
Homicides and shootings in Chicago have attracted national attention this year following a spike in the city’s murder rate and brazen incidents such as the shooting of a young man at a funeral for a gang member.
Preckwinkle said much of the problem results from a school system that has a low high school graduation rate.
“We have contented ourselves with a miserable education system that has failed many of our children,” Preckwinkle said, saying more after-school enrichment and job-training programs are needed. “I’m talking about the kids who don’t graduate, let alone the kids who graduate don’t get a very good education, even with a high school diploma.”
Emanuel aides responded with restraint, saying the mayor is taking many of the actions Preckwinkle said were needed, even as he maintained a tough stance on crime.
“Mayor Emanuel strenuously agrees that a holistic approach is necessary to successfully address crime,” Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said in a statement. “His multi-part strategy ranges from improving early childhood education, providing a longer school day and creating re-engagement centers for youth, to delivering wrap-around services, revitalizing the community policing program and working to prevent retaliatory actions by gangs.
“All of these work in tandem, but let's make no mistake, criminals deserve to be arrested,” the statement read.
At a news conference after her speech and question session, Preckwinkle said her criticism of schools wasn’t aimed at Emanuel, who as mayor appoints the Chicago Public Schools board and picks the system’s CEO.
“This was a critique of all of us, it wasn’t aimed at the mayor,” said Preckwinkle, a former CPS high school history teacher.
Preckwinkle also acknowledged that Emanuel is putting more city money into early childhood education, after-school programs and youth job programs — in part through programs coordinated with the county.
Her point, she said, was that education over the long run will do more to quell violence than arresting people and locking them up.
“You know unfortunately we live in a country in which we are much more willing to spend money on keeping people in prison than we are on educating them in our public schools,” she said. “And that’s disgraceful. It reflects badly on all of us.”
She added, “I don’t think we are going to arrest our way out of our violence problems.”
Mayor Emanuel's aides said they just learned of the remarks and are preparing a response.
Preckwinkle is a liberal who has been consistently critical of a justice system that locks up African-American and Latino men in far greater numbers than their white counterparts, particularly for drug crimes when studies show drugs are used in equal numbers across ethnic and racial boundaries
It wasn’t the first time that, while speaking without a script, she made comments that ruffled some feathers.
In August, she said former President Ronald Reagan deserved “a special place in hell” for his role in the War on Drugs, later saying she regretted the “inflammatory” remark.
hdardick@tribune.com
Twitter @ReporterHal
Preckwinkle rips Emanuel, McCarthy's handling of violence
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Preckwinkle rips Emanuel, McCarthy's handling of violence
