Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I'm tired of hearing the President is a failure. I'm tired. You can smirk all you want. There's no perfection on this floor. There's no perfection down the street. You didn't give these speeches in 2008 when we were losing 500, 600, 700,000 jobs a month. Not one of you came to the floor. Shame on you.

Now what we want to do, we want to turn our backs on those 10 million Americans currently who need long-term care. We have no alternative.

We all agree that there needs to be change in the present system that has yet to work. We have to find a way to make long-term care both accessible and affordable. These problems will not simply disappear. They're not going to go away.

This bill certainly does not fix these problems. The bill does not even provide an alternative. All it does is attack the progress made in the Affordable Care Act. You've tried to wean it down. You've tried to bevel it. You've tried to covet. You tried to take all the money away that's going into it in order to have a system in this country that was not sustainable in the first place.

Sixty-two percent of small businesses over the last 5 years went under because they couldn't pay their health care bills, and you stand there with no alternative whatsoever. Whatever happened to the ``replace'' part of the ``repeal and replace?'' Remember that? That nonsense we heard last year?

Without the CLASS Act or an alternative, people who struggle the most with daily tasks due to illness will be the ones to suffer. You know that. You know there are millions of people out there suffering, yet we have not come up with an alternative plan. Yet you condemn this, yet you accuse everybody of failing, but you don't have a plan yourself.

Where is your heart for the middle class? Have you no heart?

Announcement by the Acting Chair

Mr. Speaker, in just a few hours, the President of the United States will be on the floor to present his ideas as to how we can grow our economy and put the American people back to work. I hope the majority keeps an open mind and rejects the extreme ideology and political timidness that has driven the 112th Congress of the United States.

Need I remind my friend from New York State, need I remind him that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, as we move into this next decade, are the biggest cause and the biggest proportion of the deficit facing this Congress. And you are not going to--you are not going to nickel and dime us to solve the problem of the deficit on the backs of the middle class and the working poor. It doesn't work. You can't figure it out.

While the economic indicators are showing pretty good improvements, the unemployment rate in my home State of New Jersey is still 9.1 percent, above the national average of 8.5. Because of games played by the extreme wing of the Republican Party, the payroll tax cut that President Obama and the Democratic Congress support is at risk of expiring again.

Now, I can't say any clearer than this: $1,000 may not be a lot for millionaires like Mitt Romney paying a 13.9 percent tax rate, but it is a significant amount of money directly in the pockets of middle class families in north Jersey.

You don't have to look far to see where we are still hurting. Just last month, Mr. Speaker, the construction industry unemployment rate jumped another 3 percent to 16 percent. Passing the payroll tax cut will help grow the economy and get the American people back to work.

Isn't that what we want?

Mr. Speaker, I want to state for the Record that on January 23, 2012, I missed the two rollcall votes of the day.

Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote No. 5, on H.R. 3117--Permanent Electronic Duck Stamp Act of 2011. Additionally, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote No. 6, on H.R. 1141--Rota Cultural and Natural Resources Study Act.

personal explanation

I thank the gentleman from Michigan.

Listening to this debate, you're not hearing the same thing you heard 7 months ago I'm told. But when you look away, then you say: Gee, didn't I hear this before. Maybe that is true on both sides.

Bruce Bartlett, who was a former adviser to President Reagan and a Treasury official in George Bush's administration, wrote about the five myths of not paying the debt or not increasing the debt. One of them I think bears witness today of what I have heard, the myth that it is worth risking default on the debt to prevent a tax increase given the weak economy. This is a Republican saying this. I'm just repeating the words.

He says while Republicans' concerns about higher taxes are not unreasonable--and they are not--most economists believe that any fiscal contraction at this time would be dangerous. In fact, they note that a large cut in spending in 1937 brought in another sharp recession.

It's very easy to say that the President is the reason why we had the plague and the tremendous deficit, but if the private sector wasn't spending money, then we would have had 5 million more people out of work.

The government has a responsibility when folks can't do for themselves what we expect. That undermines the recovery of the country, and that's what happened in the Great Depression. Republicans respond that tax increases are especially harmful to growth; however, they made the same argument in 1982 when President Reagan requested the largest peacetime tax increase in American history, and again in 1993 when President Bill Clinton asked for a large tax boost for deficit reduction. In both cases, conservative economists' predictions of economic disaster were completely wrong and strong economic growth followed.

I wasn't here in '93. Many of you were here in '93. You remember what the dire consequences of the Clinton plan were and what happened. We had the greatest boom in 50 years. Just like the economists who told us we were heading toward nirvana since 2001; and I don't want any part of nirvana if that's it, and none of us do.

We're not talking here about helping the middle class; that's for sure. We've got bailouts for them, for the other side. We know what the results are. All of us know that. It's not a partisan issue, really.

So you're trying to say that you want to protect people's taxes, and we want to say we've got to pay our debts. Well, we're really not 180 degrees apart. I think we need to do both. And if we don't sit down together, we're not going to do both.

Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker.

This is not a fraternity house. This is the House of Representatives. Yet what have we wrought? I heard someone, two people say on this floor, quoting the President of the United States--they should apologize to him immediately--that the President was urging us to vote a 1-year plan. He wasn't asking us to vote on your plan for a year. You know what he thinks about what you proposed. And it didn't even come up in the Senate. In fact, 39 Republicans--that's 82 percent of the entire delegation of a Republican Senate--and 89 percent of the total Senate voted for this compromise.

I know you hate the word. ``Compromise'' does not mean that you surrender your values or your principles. Compromise is what was the basis of the Founding Fathers. That's how we got a Constitution. Nobody was happy with that Constitution. They didn't get everything they wanted, and you're not going to get everything you want. So you'd better get it out of your head right now.

The majority leader--wonderful cliches--he forgets that only 2 years ago a Republican Member of the House sponsored a 2-month payroll tax holiday and had 59 cosponsors. We have amnesia, selective amnesia. He changed his tune this Saturday. He was against the idea of a short-term gimmick. This Saturday he said it's a good deal. ``It's a victory,'' he said. He claimed victory. That reminds me of another victory I heard a couple of years ago. Once the same Members of this party, in this caucus rebelled, the Speaker reversed his course.

Keeping the payroll tax cut in place as we figure out a way to extend it for the year reduces uncertainty among employers, workers, and families in my district. And I ask that we reconsider what we're doing today.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, over 8 years since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are still not properly addressing traumatic brain injury, also known as the signature injury of both wars.

I want to thank Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Smith, all the chairmen of the subcommittees, as well as members of this committee who are moving forward on this issue. I wish we had the same compromise as we would have on other issues. I commend them for compromising. That's what our Forefathers talked about. I'm glad to see that the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Brain Injury will move oversight to the Army where there will be an increased efficiency and attention for our soldiers.

But there are still problems with screening and treating our troops. Recently, NPR ran an expose on how the Department of Defense has tested over 500,000 soldiers with a predeployment cognitive test, but has performed fewer than 3,000 tests postdeployment to actually compare the results and see if our troops were injured in theater.

The fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization bill, bipartisanly supported, Public Law 110-181, required

predeployment and postdeployment screenings of a soldier's cognitive ability. Current policy is clearly violating the intent of the law. We must ensure that the same tool is used for pre- and postdeployment cognitive screenings. We can't gauge the cognitive health of our troops without comparing tests. Last year, my amendment to the NDAA for fiscal year 2011 to address this passed the House, but was not in the final bill. We need to correct this in the next year's Defense authorization before any more soldiers slip through the cracks. It has consequences within service; and when they get out of service, it has bigger consequences.

The Defense Department has raised concerns with the currently administered test, but has stated that it will not be able to select an alternative until 2015. That is not acceptable. The longer we wait, the longer our troops suffering from undiagnosed TBIs go untreated.

I am concerned that we are not providing proper oversight for those soldiers who could have been injured in theater before this policy took effect in 2010. Many of these soldiers remain on active duty, and we must ensure that they are tested and treated.

I fear we are doing a disservice to them and our Armed Forces by not addressing this problem in this bill, and I ask everyone to consider this. This is a critical, critical issue given little attention except by Mr. McKeon and Mr. Smith.

I ask that you do review that.

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend Mr. Camp and Mr. Levin for working hard on these issues. I think they do try to put the country before the party. But this bill is terrible. It is terrible.

The holidays must have come early for the majority. What we have here is a serious proposal? It's a stocking stuffed to the brim with ideology. And I thought we could put that aside and put the country first, more important than parties, more important than ideology.

I agree with you. Let's weed out those people who literally are crooks and try to steal from the public trough and take advantage of unemployment. I went to an unemployment office yesterday in my area, in my district, in a major city, Paterson. I went to the unemployment center. I looked through all of those folks that were waiting online and working and looking and seeking work and being trained for specific jobs, particularly in health care. I looked through those records. And if you think you're going to reduce the amount of money that Americans have to spend to help their brothers and sisters, you are dead wrong. Dead wrong.

What we've done in the Bush tax cuts, they were for the least needy. Now we're talking about the most needy. The unemployment rate in New Jersey is 9.1 percent. The average in the United States is 8.6 percent.

I'm asking you, I'm begging you, let's get beyond this.

And why didn't we put employers in this? What if employers had their part shaved like the employee that we are suggesting here? How many jobs would be created if the employer had not to pay 6.2 and, instead, 4.2 percent? And I agree with the President. That should have been reduced to 3.1 percent. We could put a lot of people to work.

A thousand dollars maybe in your pocket or my pocket or your pocket, Mr. Speaker, may not be the end all, but $1,000 in many people's who work every day for a living, who love this country, is an insult. And we're just making matters worse, Mr. Speaker. We're not making them better.

Mr. Speaker, as cochair of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force, one of my top priorities is to help our servicemembers with brain injuries. With posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury recognized as the signature injuries of the conflicts and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you would think the Defense Department would have a good system to catch the injuries. They do not.

Despite our vote, a bipartisan vote in 2008 to have pre- and postdeployment screenings, postdeployment screenings have not been required. Five hundred thousand soldiers with a predeployment cognitive test were given that test before they went to the battle. Coming out, only 3,000 tests were done postdeployment to actually compare results. We have nothing to compare. This is a disgrace and a disservice to our troops.

Both sides have agreed that we want something done. It has not been done in violation of the law. The Pascrell-Platts-Andrews-Cole-Ortiz- Wilson-Coffman amendment passed in the House Defense authorization bill to address this, but it was not included in the final bill. That's what we're trying to do this year.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the life of a truly outstanding individual, Mr. Harold ``Hal'' Bruno, Jr., who passed away on November 8th, 2011 at the age of 83. A native of Chicago, Hal Bruno began his long career there as a reporter during the 1950s. From 1960 to 1978, Mr. Bruno worked for Newsweek magazine, and in 1978, he moved to ABC news where he remained until 1999. As Political Director and Director of Election Coverage at ABC News, Hal Bruno was widely known for his political savvy and his journalistic integrity. His career as a journalist spanned five decades and earned him many accolades. He was dedicated to politics and a pioneer in political journalism, so it is fitting that he passed away on an election night.

However, Hal Bruno had another passion in addition to journalism: to the brave men and women of our country's fire service. He was called to serve his neighbors as a volunteer firefighter for much of his career, and through that work as a firefighter, Mr. Bruno gained a keen interest in fire safety policies. He became a leading expert in the politics and policy of fire safety and for years contributed a

column on the subject to Firehouse magazine. He also composed numerous articles on the subject in other publications and on the internet, and helped bring attention to these important issues to Americans across the country.

Hal's passion and tenaciousness made him a highly effective advocate for firefighters and fire safety. A charter member of the National Fallen Firefighter's Foundation, he served as the organization's Chairman from 1999 until his retirement in 2008. In this position, he helped to develop fire safety programs and to create a safer environment for firefighters. He was also the Director of the Chevy Chase Fire Department in Maryland. It was truly an honor for me to work closely with Hal as we sought ways that the federal government could assist our local fire departments even before the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. Together, we developed the Assistance To Firefighters Grant (AFG) and Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant programs to help these local departments buy the equipment and hire the personnel they needed to keep their communities safe and secure. Thanks in large part to Hal's insightful input and tireless advocacy, these programs have been wildly successful, and are crucial to ensuring that our communities have the resources they need.

Homeland security starts at home, so no matter what our budget environment is like, we must continue to support firefighters and other first responders, who sacrifice so much to keep us safe. This will undoubtedly be one of Hal's great legacies, and I will continue to fight to preserve it in the future.

With Hal Bruno's passing, our nation has lost a great hero. Mr. Bruno is survived by his wife Meg, his sister Barbara, his sons Harold and Dan, and his four grandchildren. The job of a United States Congressman involves much that is rewarding, yet nothing compares to working with passionate individuals like Hal Bruno. Mr. Speaker, I ask that you join our colleagues, Hal's family and friends, our first responders, and me in commemorating and celebrating the life of Mr. Hal Bruno.

Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to all to your attention the deeds of an outstanding American and citizen of New Jersey, Joseph M. Sanzari who will be recognized on Saturday, November 19, 2011, by D.A.R.E. NJ for his many years of service to his community and as a respected individual within the great state of New Jersey.

Joe was born in Hackensack, NJ, on February 28, 1946. He was raised in Carlstadt and began learning the ins-and-outs of the construction industry at the early age of 12. He has brought innovation and expertise to this field, specializing in the construction of heavy highways, roads and bridges.

Joe has been a guiding figure for his family as well as those around him. He has been a member of many distinguished counsels in our community. His philanthropic endeavors have benefitted countless people.

Joseph Sanzari is a proud member of numerous civic and cultural organizations, sharing his unique brand of energy and talents on both a local and state level. Mr. Sanzari is currently Chairman of Hackensack University Medical Center, a member of the Board of Trustees for Hillcrest Health Service System, Inc., and a proud member of the Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation. Joe also serves as Vice Chairman on the board of the Foundation for Free Enterprises. He was a former Chairman of the Bergen County Economic Development Corporation and former commissioner of the Palisades Interstate Parkway.

As the President of Joseph M. Sanzari Inc., Joe has been involved in major construction work on the New Jersey Turnpike and New Jersey Department of Transportation highways, roads and bridges in an ongoing joint venture with J. Fletcher Creamer & Sons also known as Creamer- Sanzari. Among many of their great accomplishments, Creamer-Sanzari was responsible for the reconstruction of the Route 4 and 17 overpasses, the largest highway project in the State of New Jersey. Under Joe's leadership, this project was completed eighteen months ahead of schedule. Creamer-Sanzari was recognized by Engineering News as one of the top 25 contractors in the country.

One of the many organizations Joe is passionate about is Drugs Awareness Resistance and Education or D.A.R.E. The D.A.R.E. program works with local law enforcement and schools to bring fun and educational material about the personal and social consequences of substance abuse and violence. D.A.R.E. NJ has been a pillar in the community for raising awareness and educating our youth in the dangerous perils of drug abuse and violence.

Joe is a devoted husband, father, and grandfather. His family consists of his wife Donna, son Joseph Jr., daughters Theresa, JoAnn, and Tina, and six grandchildren. Joseph Sanzari exemplifies the sound fundamental characteristics of an extraordinary individual who is being honored by D.A.R.E. NJ for his enormous contributions to the great State of New Jersey.

The job of a United States Congressman involves so much that is rewarding, yet nothing compares to working with and recognizing the efforts of dedicated individuals like Joseph M. Sanzari. I am lucky enough to be able to call a man like him my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that you join our colleagues, Joe's wife Donna, their family and friends, the members of the D.A.R.E. NJ and me in recognizing Joseph M. Sanzari's outstanding character and service to his community.

Madam Speaker, I missed the last rollcall vote today.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote No. 859, on H. Res. 470--Rule providing for consideration of H.R. 3094-- Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act.

I thank the ranking member.

Mr. Speaker, this attempt to change the Constitution of the United States is a real disaster. We all want to make sure we balance the budgets, but to compare our household budget to the national budget is preposterous because we have different responsibilities as a Federal Government.

Alexander Hamilton, who wrote so many of the Federalist Papers--I thought we understand a great leader, a great American. I thought we understood what the responsibilities of government are.

But talking about disasters, what about natural disasters? How would a balanced budget amendment affect how the Congress looks at when there is a tornado in Joplin, a wipe-out and flooding of New Jersey, a hurricane in Florida, wildfires in Texas? The amendment requires this balanced budget amendment--which is a joke to begin with, how you named it. It doesn't balance the budget. And if the amendment ever got through, it would take 7 years to implement. We have people out of work now. But anyway, the amendment requires a supermajority for every emergency spending case of natural disasters.

Let's take my State of New Jersey. FEMA estimates that it will provide $400 million to help communities and individuals across the State recover and rebuild. Last September, we couldn't even get a majority, let alone a supermajority, to pass disaster aid unless it was offset with partisan budget cuts. Every State will have to go through that.

I want every State to know--you talk about the States. You talk about their budgets. Isn't it interesting that on January of this year, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote this: ``Amending the Constitution to require this sort of balance raises risks.'' Listen, my friends, brothers, and sisters: ``The fact that taxes fall when the economy weakens and spending and benefit programs increase''--by nature, they have to; people need help, unless we're no longer going to be a first- rate Republic--``when the economy weakens in an automatic way under existing law is an important stabilizing force for the aggregate economy.''

I thank the gentleman.

``The fact that State governments need to work against these effects in their own budgets--need to take action to raise taxes or cut spending in recessions--undoes the automatic stabilizers, essentially, at the State level. Taking those away at the Federal level risks making the economy less stable, risks exacerbating the swings in business cycles.''

We did it together, Democrats and Republican, '98, '99, 2000. We did it without an amendment to the Constitution, which will undermine this institution that we so revere right here today.

I had to make a choice on this bill, whether I would support a disputable constitutional issue about whether you can by law carry a concealed weapon or move towards the other side to those who oppose this.

Now, who opposes this legislation besides me? Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and the Police Foundation oppose this bill. Doesn't this mean anything to you at all? Doesn't it? Or does it?

I prefer community policing than try to put more guns into the hands of those people who we don't even know are going to be trained to even use them. That's my preference, Mr. Chairman.

This means my home State of New Jersey--this is not Idaho, this is not Montana--in fact, we have the most densely populated State in the Union. There is a different culture. When Clinton argued on behalf of gun possession when he was the President of the United States, he always made this point about the cultural differences in different parts of the country. And we respect that.

I'm not against the Second Amendment. I support the Second Amendment. But I don't want those folks in the street who out-arm and out-gun our police officers.

Twelve thousand fewer police officers we have in this country; 12,000 fewer police officers in our streets. We should be worried about that as a priority rather than this as a priority.

So I made the decision. The evidence is like this against doing this. We haven't had any legislation which took away one gun in the past 20 years from anybody in this country--not one. So we have made the perception being that we want to take guns away from people.

How dare you even say it.

Protect our police. Don't vote for this.

Mr. Speaker, just a few days ago, Bernard Melekian, who is Director of the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, produced a job loss ratio and report on the police departments throughout the United States of America. Mr. Speaker, it was not a pretty picture. We pat our police officers on the back, say they do a good job, and watch 12,000 of them lose their jobs in the United States of America.

There's one point I want to bring out here, Mr. Speaker, and it's this: If we place so much homeland security responsibilities on our first responders, then how in God's name can we turn our backs when cities and towns and rural areas are in tough financial shape? We will have an opportunity to rectify and right the ship this afternoon.

I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding.

I want to thank Mr. Dicks for his leadership on this issue. I want to thank Mr. Rogers for his open-mindedness, as usual, hopefully as we go into this discussion.

As cochair of the House Law Enforcement Caucus, I want to call everyone's attention to one of the glaring differences between the bill the Senate passed earlier this week and the one reported by our own Appropriations Committee: Funding for our local police officers.

The Senate bill contained $232 million for the COPS office, including $200 million for COPS hiring. This bill completely eliminated funding altogether. We're here today to try to rectify that situation.

Mr. Speaker, we know that State and local governments are still slashing their budgets as a result of the recession. In fact, just last week the Department of Justice released a sobering report, ``The Impact of the Economic Downturn on American Police Agencies.'' I think all of our Members should read it. I want to place this as Exhibit A in my presentation today, Mr. Speaker, into the Record.

The report revealed that nearly 12,000 law enforcement officers will lose their job this year alone. Another 30,000 positions remain unfilled, and 2011 would produce the first national decline in law enforcement officers in 25 years.

Less cops on the beat means more crime on the streets, plain and simple. It is a very specific aspect of this particular problem. It's not going to get better.

I work very closely with my counterpart, Representative Reichert, who was a sheriff's officer in Washington State, to cochair the Law Enforcement Caucus. Earlier this year, 115 Members of this body, Republicans and Democrats, supported these programs in a letter to appropriators.

It is just not enough, Mr. Speaker, to pat our police officers on the back. We must support them. The Federal Government has a particular responsibility, specifically, to debate the issue and look at the issue of homeland security. They're the first there, our firefighters. If there's any manmade disaster or act of nature, they show up first before anybody from the Federal Government.

To see the number of police officers being reduced in this country is unconscionable, particularly after 9/11. Our crime is rising specifically in the towns where these police officers have been laid off, furloughed, demoted--and certainly lack the promotions. The Federal Government has some responsibility here.

I would also like to place into the Record a very strong statement on the issue of the matter of crime in our cities and in our towns. I will make that Exhibit B.

I think the homeland security issue is a critical issue. But let's bring it back to our own towns. Police departments in the United States now have put on a list of priorities what they're going to respond to and what they cannot respond to.

Listen to these. They've stopped responding to motor vehicle thefts in many towns. They've stopped responding to burglar alarms that go off. They've stopped responding to non-injury motor vehicle accidents. In many towns, the warrant squads--if you don't know what a warrant squad is, then you don't know what police departments do day in and day out. They've minimized, two or three people left to try to find the folks that have perpetuated crimes in our communities.

They've reported decreases in investigations of property crimes. You talk about a response when you call the police department. Wait till you see the response in terms of investigating these particular crimes.

This has all come out under the Justice Department. I'm not making these numbers up. That's why I submit for the Record the numbers.

Let me just conclude, Mr. Speaker, in saying this has to be a priority. Protecting the public is our primary priority, and I ask consideration of what the gentleman from Washington is putting forth today.

[From the New York Times, Oct. 21, 2011]

In High-Crime Areas, Still Too Few Police

(By Dan Mihalopoulos and Hunter Clauss)

Despite Mayor Rahm Emanuel's highly promoted efforts at

concentrating additional

police patrols in the city's most dangerous neighborhoods,

many crime-ridden police districts still have fewer officers

patrolling their streets than far safer areas of the city

have, according to recent data obtained by The Chicago News

Cooperative.

The data included officer-assignment data for all 9,400

Chicago police officers, as well as almost 1,000 detectives--

information that the city has steadfastly declined to make

public.

The analysis found that the distribution of patrol officers

among the city's 25 police districts does not correlate to

the places where crime rates are highest.

The 5th police district, which includes the Roseland and

Pullman neighborhoods on the Far South Side, has 266 patrol

officers, four fewer than the 270 officers in the 12th

district on the gentrified Near West Side, the data showed.

But the 5th district experienced 1,049 violent crimes in

the first eight months of this year, while the 12th district

recorded 341 violent incidents during the same period,

according to police department records.

Many predominantly black districts on the South and West

Sides had more than three or four murders, rapes, armed

robberies or assaults for every beat officer assigned to work

within their boundaries during that period.

That contrasted drastically with 10 districts, mostly in

more affluent sections on the North Side, where there were

one or two such crimes for every officer.

Many City Council members and neighborhood activists have

long campaigned for a police department reorganization that

would put more officers in high-crime neighborhoods. Told of

the deployment data analysis, they said the results

vindicated their demands.

``It basically validates the need for redeployment and

reallocation,'' said Alderman Anthony Beale, whose 9th Ward

is largely in the 5th district.

Mr. Beale said this week that he would call for Council

hearings on staffing levels in police districts. He said he

had unsuccessfully sought deployment statistics from the

police for years.

``Putting the most police in the areas with the most

crime--it's just that simple,'' said the Rev. Marshall Hatch,

whose New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church is in a

West Side police district with the second-lowest proportion

of police officers to violent crimes.

Lt. Maureen Biggane, a spokeswoman for the police

department, said officials were in the process of ``right-

sizing the department'' and had focused initial redeployment

efforts on the highest-crime districts. The debate over how

best to deploy police officers has raged for decades, with

representatives of more tranquil corners of the city

successfully blocking repeated attempts to shift greater

resources away from their neighborhoods to the most violent

districts.

The topic has become especially heated as City Hall's

budget problems have worsened in the past few years. Even

after the planned closing of three district stations, the

police department would remain by far the largest component

of the budget.

Police spending is slated to drop by 4.4 percent in 2012,

to about $1.26 billion out of the total city budget of $6.28

billion.

During economic boom times, former Mayor Richard M. Daley

promised and delivered expansion of the police ranks. When

the city's budget deficits grew, the Daley administration

allowed the police force to dwindle.

In 2008, officials reluctantly confirmed that they had been

forced to renege on Mr. Daley's vow to hire new officers, and

police academy classes ceased training cadets. Retirements

and other attrition quickly drove down the count of sworn

officers on the payroll.

Since his inauguration in May, Mayor Emanuel and his new

police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, have faced reality. In

presenting his 2012 budget-proposal, Mr. Emanuel said he

would delete more than 1,200 perennially unfilled officer

positions from the books ``to end the charade of carrying

hundreds of police officer vacancies without actually hiring

them.''

While acknowledging that they will have a smaller force

than the Daley administration once commanded, Mr. Emanuel and

Mr. McCarthy are as leery as Mr. Daley was of moving officers

from safe neighborhoods to higher-crime areas. Instead, City

Hall's new leaders say they have shifted personnel from the

specialized units that Mr. Daley built up and reassigned them

as beat officers in districts across Chicago.

Mr. Emanuel said he had transferred more than 1,000

officers ``to beat patrols in our neighborhoods,'' removing

them from desk jobs and special units.

``Every police district across our city received additional

officers,'' Mr. Emanuel told aldermen in his budget speech on

Oct. 12. ``Those districts with the most crime got the

biggest increases, as it should be.''

Ms. Biggane, the police spokeswoman, said eight high-crime

districts had benefited from the first redeployment wave,

involving 500 officers, and other parts of the city have

since received additional patrols.

But the Emanuel administration has declined to provide

documentation of those moves. The new administration has

adhered to longstanding policies of the Daley administration,

whose officials denied Freedom of Information Act requests by

contending that public disclosure of documents detailing

officer deployment levels would compromise security.

The Chicago News Cooperative recently obtained a list of

the unit assignments for the 10,300 sworn Chicago police

department employees from a police source who requested

anonymity because the department leaders have declined to

release it.

The records described the unit assignments as of early

October and appeared to reflect the vast majority of the

recent personnel moves ordered by the Emanuel administration.

Most of the detectives were assigned to one of the

department's five area headquarters, while about 2,400 of the

police officers were either assigned directly or detailed to

specialized units, including the narcotics section and the

internal affairs division.

It was impossible to deduce from the data exactly where the

officers in specialized units were working. The list also did

not include supervisors.

The other 7,000 police officers, representing a majority of

the department's sworn members, were each assigned to patrol

beats in one of the 25 districts. The number of officers in

each district ranged from a low of 191 in the 23rd district

to 386 in the 7th district.

A comparison of the beat deployment figures with department

statistics for property crimes and violent crimes in each

district this year shows:

Four districts--the 25th, 8th, 6th and 4th--had higher

ratios of both property crimes and violent crimes per officer

than the citywide average.

The highest ratios of property crimes to beat officer

counts were in the 14th, 8th and 25th districts, each of

which reported at least 15 property crimes per patrol officer

in the year's first eight months.

The lowest proportion of violent crimes to officers was in

the 1st district, which covers downtown Chicago, followed by

the 19th district on the North Side.

The 4th district, in the city's southeast corner, had the

largest gap between staffing level and violence, with 4.05

violent crimes per officer.

The 4th district covers most of the 7th Ward, whose

alderman, Sandi Jackson, praised Mr. Emanuel for adding

officers to areas of greater need, despite tight budget

constraints. But asked about the Chicago News Cooperative

findings, Ms. Jackson replied: ``There is absolutely a

disparity. We are not where we would want to be ideally.''

Some experts say the reaction of aldermen in apparently

underserved districts, though politically astute, would not

lead to the wisest policies for fighting crime.

``It is reasonable and rational to expect that there should

be more officers in areas with more crime,'' said Arthur

Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminology at Loyola

University. ``But there is no evidence that would necessarily

be the case.''

Mr. Lurigio said saturating areas with officers often

merely pushed criminals to other places that then witnessed a

spike in violence.

Still, the city should deploy its police officers based on

a formula that would account not only for crime rates but

also for average response times to service calls, said Wesley

Skogan, professor of political science at Northwestern

University's Institute for Policy Research.

``This is Chicago, so everybody wants more and nobody wants

to give up officers,'' Mr. Skogan said. ``Emanuel should use

his crisis clout and allocate police resources based on

workload.''