CHICAGO, Ill. (WTVO) — With 11 people killed in 73 shootings over the Memorial Day weekend, neighborhood activists in Chicago are calling for the repeal of policies that hamper police officers’ ability to catch criminals.

More than 50 people were injured in the weekend shootings.

Tio Hardman, of the group Violence Interrupters, told The Center Square that recently adopted policies prevent law enforcement from using their full abilities to combat crime.

“Some of the policies that law enforcement needs to change like you can not chase somebody in the car, you can not chase somebody on foot. Those policies need to be reversed,” Hardiman said.

After the passage of the no-foot chase policy in 2021, the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police responded by saying, “Well, policing in Chicago is gone. No more foot chases.”

Hardiman says the city should treat crime as a public health emergency.

“If we don’t address this epidemic of gun violence as a public health emergency or public health issue, we may miss the opportunity to really change the landscape overall,” Hardiman said.

Since 2019, a CBS News report found that about 3,300 Chicago Police officers retired, resigned, or were fired, and only 1,600 were hired.

Officers cited exhaustion and lack of support from public officials as their reasons for quitting.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, civil unrest erupted all across the city, requiring police officers to work 12-hour shifts with no days off.

Following that was a bitter fight between then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the police union over a COVID vaccine mandate.

The same CBS report found that more officers resigned in 2021 than in any other year in the past 20 years.

On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker agreed that public safety is a high priority, but said the state’s approach to crime fighting is to address “the root causes of crime” through a holistic, multi-generational approach.

“When there is more poverty in a community, there is more likely to be criminal activity that arises in that community. The more we can lift people up, and we are doing that in a number of ways, one of which is providing more education funding, early childhood education, and alleviating some of the burdens on young families,” Pritzker said.

During the recent election, Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson also touted his “holistic approach to public safety,” but promised not to “defund the police.”

In 2020, as Cook County Commissioner, Johnson introduced legislation called Justice for Black Lives, which called for redirecting funding away from incarceration and policing and toward health care, restorative justice, and job creation.

On Tuesday, Johnson released a statement saying, “I am committed to leveraging every single resource at our disposal to protect every single life in our city” after calling the weekend violence “intolerable.”

A woman was stabbed to death in an alley in the 5700 block of West Chicago Avenue, near the mayor’s home. A 36-year-old man was shot in about five blocks away, in the 700 block of North Pine Avenue.