Chicago Lawn is the city’s second-largest police district, with cops answering calls from Pershing Road and Kedzie Avenue all the way to 87th Street and Cicero Avenue.
It’s hard to properly patrol that much real estate. But a solution seemed simple enough: split the district in two and add a new police station. The district’s residents and elected officials agree.
That sounds like a win to us. Especially since the state wants to sell the city a closed Illinois National Guard Armory at 5400 W. 63rd St. for $1 so the building can be converted into a new police district headquarters.
But leave it to Mayor Brandon Johnson and his administration, as happens so often it’s become custom, to find a way to foul it up.
Johnson wants to accept the armory from the state — but he doesn’t want to turn it into a much-needed police station. Instead, his administration plans to use the building to store and maintain squad cars, aircraft and other equipment.
Voters in the 13th and 23rd wards want the new police station. Last spring, they voted in favor of a nonbinding referendum to create a new police district.
“The mayor is playing politics with public safety. … There’s a real need here,” Ald. Silvana Tabares (23rd) said. “Our residents deserve to know that, when they call 911, help is on the way. We don’t have that now, and the mayor appears to be OK with that.”
The Johnson administration last week said turning the armory into a police station would violate federal air traffic safety rules because the building sits so close to the southern edge of Midway Airport’s runways.
But rather than turning the building into a municipal fix-it shop, the Johnson administration should work with the federal government to turn the armory into the much-needed police station.
That means taking proactive, “let’s make it work” steps, such as working with the feds to get a runway protection zone variance, just as the city did to allow construction of a third story atop John Hancock College Prep at 5437 W. 64th Place in 2021.
Meanwhile, Ald. Marty Quinn (13th) said FAA waivers are often granted, and the Johnson administration’s argument against turning the armory into a police station doesn’t fly.
“If it’s in the runway protection zone and [the armory is] a hindrance to aircraft flying in and out of Midway, then it should be torn down,” Quinn said. “Save those excuses for someone else.”
The armory complex includes two buildings. One, facing the airfield, would not be used for the new station. The station would go in the other building, facing 63rd Street, and is “a block away from the Chicago Fire Department,” Quinn said. “I understand the runway protection zone. I don’t understand how it’s applicable here when there’s a fire station a block to the east.”
Quinn said Johnson’s own Department of Aviation backed an ordinance in March — before the state agreed to essentially give the armory to the city — to try to buy it for $1.3 million.
“We didn’t hear, ‘We can’t do that because of the FAA’ then,” Quinn said. But now “that we want to do a police district, and we passed a bill that the sole purpose is a police district, [they’re saying], ‘You can’t do that because of the FAA.’ No. I’m not buying that.”
State Rep. Angie Guerrero-Cuellar has sent Gov. JB Pritzker a letter asking him to delay the sale until there are conversations with the mayor. Johnson claims the federal government needs to sign off on it.
Johnson has said he has been working collaboratively with the alders on the issue, but they say there hasn’t been conversation with the mayor about it.
Tabares and Quinn say the 8th District can no longer serve and protect on its own. Chicagoans there have spoken. The mayor must start listening.
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