For the last quarter century, violent crime rates nationwide have generally been in decline. Disturbingly, however, some American cities are bucking this trend, and crime rates have been increasing in the mid-2010s—significantly. Nowhere is this more true than Chicago, where the homicide rate rose 58% between 2015 and 2016. The current year has shown little improvement, and the Chicago PD, public officials, and concerned citizens are at a loss. Who better than New York City’s longest serving Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who oversaw some of the City's largest declines in crime, to help advise Chicagoans about turning their trend around.

In addition to helping make New York City's streets safer, Ray Kelly was responsible for transforming the NYPD into a world-class counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering force. At a time when the conversation on urban crime is particularly polarizing, Kelly’s firsthand accounts, as outlined in his recent book Vigilance: My Life Serving America and Protecting its Empire City, provide a unique perspective about how these threats should be approached on a national scale, as well as in the city of Chicago.

Commissioner Kelly will be available to answer audience questions and sign books following the program. A limited number of complimentary copies will be distributed to attendees on a first-come, first-served basic.

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With fifty years in public service, including fourteen years as police commissioner of the City of New York, Raymond Kelly is one of the world's most well-known and highly esteemed leaders in law enforcement. Kelly was appointed police commissioner in January 2002 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, making Kelly the longest serving police commissioner in the city's history, as well as the first to hold the post for a second, separate tenure. He also served as police commissioner under Mayor David N. Dinkins from 1992 to 1994.

In 2002, Commissioner Kelly created the first counterterrorism bureau of any municipal police department in the country. He also established a new global intelligence program and stationed New York City detectives in eleven foreign cities. In addition to dedicating extensive resources to preventing another terrorist attack, the NYPD has driven violent crime down by 40 percent from 2001 levels. Commissioner Kelly also established a Real Time Crime Center, a state-of-the-art facility that uses data mining to search millions of computer records and put investigative leads into the hands of detectives in the field.