A picture of two Chicago cops sleeping on duty amid the city’s crime wave went viral and prompted officials to take disciplinary action on Monday. For the past two weekends Chicago has made national headlines for the number of people being shot and killed.
The image, which shows the two Chicago police officers wearing bulletproof vests asleep in the front seats of a police vehicle, was posted to Facebook on Saturday morning and has since been widely circulated across social media, Fox News reported.
The photo drew the attention of mayoral candidate Ja’Mal Green, who used it to criticize Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for ordering mandatory overtime for police officers.
Recently superintendent Eddie Johnson promised 600 additional weekend officers to the five most violent police district’s in Chicago to tackle the city’s crime wave, The Chicago-Sun Times reported.
The decision was met with concerns, with Fraternal Order of Police President Kevin Graham warning that it could lead to burnout.
Green remarked that the photo of the sleeping officers proved why it was a bad move.
“Officers get fatigued which will prevent them from reacting to crime,” he said on Facebook. “Militarizing communities does NOT reduce violence.”
Former Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, also a mayoral candidate, said it was “just inexcusable” to find officers sleeping on the job, adding that it was a “big deal,” WGN News reported.
Commenting on the photo, mayoral candidate and former police board president Lori Lightfoot said police officers were being pushed to a breaking point with “excessive overtime work and very little officer wellness support, resulting in stress, fatigue, and potentially deadly consequences.”
Former CPS CEO Paul Vallas added that, aside from the photo, the weekend’s “continued bloodbath of shootings and murders shows that the Chicago Police Department's unrelenting overtime strategy for officers simply is not working.”
Nearly 60 people were shot over last weekend, six of them fatally, in Chicago, CBS Chicago reported.
The violent events that unfolded made the weekend the second most violent weekend of the year as well as the second weekend this month in which at least 60 people were shot.
Data shows a 58 percent increase in homicide rates in the city between 2015 and 2016. President Donald Trump threatened to take federal action to fight crime in Chicago.
The Chicago Police Department said the officers involved in the incident “were not on an overtime initiative and worked minimal amounts of overtime since July 1 and didn’t work overtime this week or weekend,” Fox News said.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the officers would face discipline.
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