UChicago faculty, students, and staff gathered with members of the broader South Side community last week for the first of four planned meetings of the Public Safety Advisory Council this academic year. The meeting focused on pedestrian safety and the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD)’s approach to data-driven policing.
Launched in 2022, the Public Safety Advisory Council (PSAC) is an independent body that seeks community input on issues impacting safety and security on campus and in the UCPD extended patrol area. The council is also meant to facilitate positive, productive interactions between the UCPD and the community it serves, working to generate awareness about public safety issues and programs and to promote transparency regarding the work of the Department of Safety and Security (DSS) and the UCPD. PSAC members provide their perspectives in the development of public safety policies, practices, and protocols and are empowered to review existing policies and suggest new ones. The council’s 15 voting members include faculty, students, staff, and community residents.
“Community engagement is really at the core of the mission of our council because the whole point is to provide community feedback to the administration on public safety topics and the reason why that’s so important is because we have a huge and very diverse community,” Sharon Fairley, Professor from Practice at the UChicago Law School and PSAC Council Chair said of the council at a Hyde Park community meeting last month. “When you talk about all the stakeholders—between faculty members, students, staff members, and then all the people who are served by the public safety systems that we have here—it’s incredibly diverse, so it’s really important that we have a formal way to gather the opinions and attitudes of that group of people in a positive and productive way.”
After Fairley kicked off the PSAC meeting, attendees got a brief public safety update from UCPD Chief Kyle Bowman. Katie Martin Peck, Associate Director of Campus Environment, then addressed the topic of pedestrian safety. Though the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) is responsible for the public right-of-way (which includes streets, sidewalks, parkways, and street crossings), the University has completed and is planning a number of enhancements after receiving approval from the city, in an effort to prioritize safety on and near campus.
Martin Peck shared details on the University’s pedestrian safety enhancement strategy, recently completed enhancements, and planned future enhancements, noting that her team began recent efforts by analyzing intersections and pedestrian crossings and prioritizing enhancements based on criteria such as the volume of pedestrian activity, the number of reported incidents, vehicular speeds, and observed and reported dangerous driving behavior or crosswalk conditions. After identifying two key areas—55th Street and the combined area of 59th, the Midway, and 60th— the University recently completed enhancements including new crosswalk and lane striping, updated signage such as crosswalk and stop signs, and extended concrete curbs or “bump-outs” that allow increased pedestrian and driver visibility and reduce the distance pedestrians have to travel across vehicular lanes. Those improvements complemented new speed tables installed by the Chicago Department of Transportation. Representatives from CDOT also addressed questions from meeting participants on pedestrian safety, sharing how the city is working with electric scooter and bike companies as well as riders to reduce sidewalk riding and other safety concerns.
The meeting covered the topic of data-driven policing as well, with Sean Malinowski, Managing Partner at The Policing Lab, providing context about data-driven policing practices broadly and Bowman sharing examples of how UCPD looks to data in their daily work. Working closely with the University of Chicago Crime Lab, Bowman said, for example, UCPD has been able to get a clearer picture of the types of robberies that have occurred within the patrol area in recent years and found the overwhelming majority of those incidents involved individuals using vehicles. Crime Lab then was able to offer data that narrowed down the types of vehicles most commonly used as well as the types of vehicles most commonly being reported stolen (there was often overlap between the two). UCPD uses this data to implement strategies such as increasing awareness of those vehicles in the area as needed. UCPD has seen a 40% robbery reduction compared to the same time last year, Bowman said.
“I’ve often said, and used this language specifically, I feel our number one job is to prevent people from becoming victims,” Bowman said. “I specifically say preventing people from becoming victims because growing up in Detroit, I was a victim, I know what that experience does, but our job isn’t just to make arrests, our job is to prevent a crime from happening in the first place.”
Presenters concluded the meeting by answering questions from council members and other attendees and encouraged the group to build on the discussion at the next planned council meeting in February and the council’s in-person gathering in April.
Those interested in attending the next PSAC meeting can email psac@uchicago.edu to request meeting notifications and can learn more by visiting psac.uchicago.edu.
