On today’s episode we sit down with Susan Lee who is currently Chief of Strategy and Policy at Chicago CRED but was previously Deputy Mayor for Public Safety under the Lightfoot administration.

Lee is known as an expert on violence prevention and was doing this same work in Los Angeles before coming to Chicago. Lee was brought in to city government to try to help build a more robust and coordinated anti-violence effort from a position within the Mayor’s office. Leaked emails have demonstrated that anti-violence partners that Lee had helped organize were complaining about the rhetoric being used by Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown regarding their criticism of bail reform. Rhetoric both continue to use despite the facts. It is believed that this very rhetoric lead Lee to leave the Mayor’s office and return to her work with Chicago CRED.

Our conversation today goes deep in to the work of the organizations working everyday in Chicago to prevent violence from occurring. Chicago CRED is just one of many organizations working on violence prevention. They are routinely underfunded and left to deal with the repercussions of failed city policies. For decades the city has continued to remove resources from the most under served communities and left organizations trying to do this work to pick up the pieces. Lee’s work is very important because to some degree these organizations are the only ones trying to make a difference in these communities.

We also discuss Lee’s recent OpEd in the Chicago Tribune on how reform of the Chicago Police Department hangs by a thread. This OpEd was in response to Superintendent David Brown’s firing of Robert Boik who was head of the office that was directing reform efforts. A move not inline with the rhetoric on reform coming from Mayor Lightfoot or Superintendent Brown.