- published: 02 Nov 2015
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The Chicago Police Department (CPD), is the principal law enforcement agency of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States, under the jurisdiction of the Mayor of Chicago. It is the second largest non-federal law enforcement agency in the United States behind the New York City Police Department. It has about 12,244 sworn officers and over 1,925 other employees. Tracing its roots back to 1835, the Chicago Police Department is one of the oldest modern police forces in the world.
The Superintendent of Police leads the Chicago Police Department. Along with the assistance of the first deputy superintendent, the superintendent manages four bureaus, each commanded by a bureau chief.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed Garry F. McCarthy, former director of the Newark, New Jersey, Police Department, as superintendent; this was approved by the city council on June 8, 2011. McCarthy was the highest paid city employee with an annual salary of $260,004. Prior to McCarthy's appointment, Jody P. Weis was sworn in as superintendent of police on February 1, 2008. At the time, Weis was the second Chicago police superintendent hired from outside of the city. He replaced Philip J. Cline, who officially retired on August 3, 2007. Weis' contract expired on March 1, 2011. Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Cline's predecessor, Terry Hillard, on an interim basis. McCarthy was forced to resign at the request of Mayor Emanuel on December 1, 2015 over the city's high murder rate and his department's handling of the shooting of Laquan McDonald. The mayor appointed Bureau of Detectives Chief John J. Escalante as interim superintendent.
Chicago (i/ʃᵻˈkɑːɡoʊ/ or /ʃᵻˈkɔːɡoʊ/) is the third most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois and the Midwest. The Chicago metropolitan area, often referred to as Chicagoland, has nearly 10 million people and is the third-largest in the U.S. Chicago is the seat of Cook County.
Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, and grew rapidly in the mid-nineteenth century. The city is an international hub for finance, commerce, industry, technology, telecommunications, and transportation: O'Hare International Airport is the busiest airport in the world when measured by aircraft traffic; it also has the largest number of U.S. highways and rail road freight. In 2012, Chicago was listed as an alpha global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranked seventh in the world in the 2014 Global Cities Index.As of 2014, Chicago had the third largest gross metropolitan product in the United States at US$610.5 billion.
A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their powers include the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with police services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.
Law enforcement, however, constitutes only part of policing activity. Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order. In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property. Many police forces suffer from police corruption to a greater or lesser degree. The police force is usually a public sector service, meaning they are paid through taxes.