The rate of drug arrests in Chicago is declining, and is showing no sign of stopping. A crime data analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times found that the Windy City is on track this year to record the lowest number of drug-related arrests since the Nixon era.
According to the Sun-Times, at the rate it’s going, the city is expected to make 13,000 drug arrests by the end of 2016. This would be the lowest annual amount since 1973, two years after President Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs. That year, Chicago police made 11,572 drug arrests.
After peaking in 2004, with 57,000 in total, drug arrests in Chicago have seen a steady decline. Between 2008 and 2015, the number of drug arrests in the city has decreased by almost half, a phenomenon that city officials attribute to a number of factors—one of them being, a shift in priority on to violent gangs that “pose the greatest risk” to communities rather than small time drug offenders. Chicago police “implemented a strategic crime-fighting plan that focuses enforcement around the disproportionate number of violent offenders,” a spokesman for the police department told the Sun-Times.
Another major reason that arrests have dropped in recent years, is that since 2012, police have had the option to ticket people instead of arresting them for low-level offenses like marijuana possession. This contributed significantly to the decline in drug arrests over the years, since the majority of them have been for pot possession.
Other contributing factors include the increase in diversion programs allowing police to direct drug offenders to treatment instead of jail, and heightened scrutiny on police brutality after November dash cam footage showed 17-year-old Chicagoan, Laquan McDonald, shot by a police officer 16 times. Since then, officers have been less aggressive, according to the Sun-Times. In addition, city payroll records show that there are 1,200 fewer city police officers than there were five years ago.
But while drug arrests are on the decline, the city still struggles with rising rates of heroin overdoses. In October, a bad batch of heroin cut with fentanyl caused 74 overdoses in 72 hours. And many of the 1,000 drug deaths in Chicago between 2005 and 2007 were attributed to fentanyl. Despite this, funding for addiction treatment has been cut by nearly 30% since 2007.