Chicago doesn’t have a crime problem it has a connection problem. Public safety public policy should be a comprehensive/holistic police and community partnership. That means smart and aggressive crime control, community and officer training, community organizing, relationship building and violence intervention/prevention strategies.

• The heart of any public safety public policy is its police officers. Ours here in Chicago are world renown for their less than spectacular behavior. A lot of work has been done to resolve this. The City of Chicago should embrace this 12 Point Police Reform Plan.

• Not being connected to the communities they protect and the failure of CAPS calls for the new Mayor to "re-invigorate" community policing by implementing Problem Oriented Policing that has worked quite well in other cities… why not ours?

• Police training should not be done by thugs like Black Water, who did train our officers in 2008. This seems like a key reason for making our police better partners with better training from a better source. The United States Department of Justice to train our officers in community policing.

• Our new Mayor should link his support for the expansion of the EXISTING community schools initiative to keeping kids out of trouble from 3 to 6 and getting communities directly involved in public safety as part of his comprehensive/holistic approach to public safety.

• Mayor Emanuel should create a Community Connections program where activists and organizers work with police officers on issues of cultural competency, immigration, human trafficking, hate crimes and mental illness and police officers teach activists and organizers the difficulties they face when policing in regards to these issues.

• The city should partner with CSAC and create a city-wide network to enhance it and give tax credits to anyone who hires an ex-offender. Also work with programs like Sheridan Correctional Center http://www.healthauthority.org/prisoner_reentry.html  & http://www.idoc.state.il.us/subsections/facilities/information.asp?instchoice=she or the Amer-i-can Project to help prisoners who are returning to our city.

• The city should study and then implement the best practices from the United States Mayor’s Conference’s gang intervention strategies.