Throughout 2019, Chicago police officers made nearly 80,000 arrests before scaling them back significantly during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the following spring.
Now five years later, that drop appears not to be just a COVID-era blip: In recent years, arrests have rebounded slightly, but annually police still are recording tens of thousands of fewer arrests than they did in 2019.
The trend is among a number of long-term shifts in how the criminal justice system operates in Cook County, according to Loyola University researchers who in partnership with local officials produced a data project that seeks to shed light on how “shocks to the system” like the pandemic have reshaped how crime and violence are handled in Chicago…