How Chicago’s Citizens Lost the Mayoral Election
Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s Defunding Promises Will Produce a Brutal Crime Wave and Kneecap the Police
The Great City
I love Chicago too! I traveled through there when I was young and it was everything that a dirty city ought to be. Forty years ago, it was a crumbling city full of unhealthy and impatient people. Young people should watch Running Scared, the original Blues Brothers and Steve McQueen’s final movie The Hunter to get an idea of the look and feel of Chicago at that time.
However, the Chicago that I got to know in 2006 and after was a city transformed, clean and full of healthy people running parallel to Lakeshore Drive in 20-degree weather. I got off the plane at Midway and everywhere I looked in the airport there was a sign from Mayor Daley saying: Welcome to Chicago – We’re glad you’re here.
The Cloud Gate, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum are all can’t miss venues in that great city. The food alone is a worthy destination. YouTube videos from Best of Chicago can cause you to gain weight just by watching them. Deep dish pizza, beef sandwiches and skirt steak breakfasts await you and you can expect to enjoy your visit in safety (today) in spite of the city’s dangerous reputation.
Crime in Chicago
Chicago is rightfully known as the US murder capital. Holiday weekends are especially dangerous.
Shamefully in 2022, Chicago had 697 homicides and remarkably was the American record holder for the eleventh straight year. Other crime is also completely out of control. Thankfully homicides have not increased at the rate of other lawlessness.
Crime in Chicago overall has increased during the past five years by nearly 20%, according to an official report by the Chicago Police Department. The year-over-year change in crime was even greater last year. Between 2021 and 2022, overall crime in Chicago increased by 41%, after overall crime had decreased each year in 2019 and 2020 and slightly increased in 2021.
Theft is driving the overall increase in crime. Car theft is up 114% since 2018, and other thefts increased by 32% since 2018. Just last year, motor vehicle theft increased by 102% and theft by 56%.
Chicago Police staffing is in serious trouble and getting worse
Nationwide, police staffing is experiencing both a mass exodus and a severe recruiting crisis. It may sound like an opinion, but the best candidates for law enforcement came from the families of career military and law enforcement veterans. Today, they are saying ‘no way’ to their family members joining the ranks as new officers and deputies. Losing those candidates, whose families were steeped in service, leaves a candidate pool of Generation Z officers who lack the cultural competence to succeed. They may survive but will jump ship at the first better offer, likely beyond law enforcement.
WGN reports: Last August, the number of sworn officers plunged to 11,611, its lowest level in years. The department was down 1,742 officers from its peak four years earlier.
“What we really started to notice over the last few years is we didn’t have the manpower to man the beat cars,” said recently retired Chicago police lieutenant John Garrido.
A deeper dive into the data by WGN Investigates found 35% of the officers who left the department last year resigned as opposed to retired.
Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson has a defund the police agenda
I understand that some people regretted suggesting defunding the police. Not Johnson.
In December 2020 during a radio interview discussing when Lori Lightfoot and former President Obama dismissed police defunding as a ‘snappy slogan,’ Johnson publicly criticized them both. “I don’t look at it as a slogan,” Johnson said. “It’s an actual real political goal.”
He thought this was a good idea before it was a catchy slogan. As a county commissioner, he moved to defund the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
According to the Chicago Tribune: That sheriff’s budget was deemed a target of Johnson and grassroots organizers in support of defunding when Cook County began budget negotiations in the fall of 2020, but he did not detail how much funding he wanted diverted or how. Instead, he broadly said at the time, “Reducing the sheriff’s budget is a case that I believe that we want,” adding: “There is no number big enough.”
Community Violence Intervention (CVI) never worked
Johnson’s statements indicate his core intentions on addressing crime is to remove funding from law enforcement and redirect that money into supposed alternatives.
The mayor-elect wants to use these revenue streams [increased business taxation and fees] for new social programs to attack the “root causes” of crime. One obvious choice is the Boston Ceasefire spinoff Cure Violence, a community violence intervention strategy (CVI) that allegedly works within the healthcare realm declaring gun violence to be a public health and welfare emergency.
In fact, their approach is: Violence has a contagious nature. The requirement for intervention becomes obvious, you have to interact with the people who have been 'infected.'"
The Cure Violence website boasts these reductions:
-45% violent crime (Trinidad & Tobago)
-63% shooting (New York City)
-30% shootings (Philadelphia)
-48% shooting — in first week of program (Chicago)
Click the link above and verify their assertion. There are plenty of cities that have adopted the Cure Violence model but none with a reputation as a safe place to live.
The cottage industry of CVI, including Ceasefire and Cure Violence received a well deserved drubbing from the unlikely source, Vox. In spite of their left of center reporting and opinion pieces, they provided a very well researched summation of CVI strategies concluding that some focus areas actually experienced an increase in crime, particularly the designated crimes they were charged to prevent. Vox reports:
“But studies on interrupters have been largely disappointing. Reviews of the evidence have found that the approach often produces no significant effect on shootings and murders, and some programs were even associated with more violence.”
CPD Consent Decree
The police department is still subject to a consent decree enacted in 2019. Consent decrees are the negotiated settlements of US Department of Justice lawsuits that allege agencies are engaged in a ‘pattern and practice’ that systematically deprives citizens of basic civil rights.
In other words, the city has pled ‘nolo contendere’ to abusive racist tactics and agreed to a plan to reform. The process, originally planned for five years, has been extended in 2022 to an additional three years.
Travis Yates writes:
“The track record of consent decrees is abysmal. Recruitment and retention are only the beginning of the issues that occur. Crime and particularly violence will increase and once an agency enters into a consent decree, the chances are that they will never get out of it.”
Mayor-elect Johnson joins a curious group of mayors that want their local police under federal supervision. The insane logic is that you bring in outside monitors to deem the agency racist and then mandate they prioritize minority hiring.
Going hard left causes Chicagoans and Chicago cops to make hard choices
Mayor-elect Johnson is going to make prohibition look like a walk in the park. Chicago is an amazing city that deserves better. The police department is facing a police staffing shortage where they don’t get to choose from the most qualified candidates, causing the disastrous policy decisions of lowering standards. Applicants rejected by cities, even neighboring suburbs, who offer better pay and working conditions, will be the best the city can get both in ability and background.
Tom Hogan, former elected district attorney writes: De-policing or quitting entirely may become the only viable alternatives for police. The big losers in the case of CPD v. Kim Foxx will be the people of Chicago, who will be left with no police, a non-prosecuting prosecutor, and more dead children.
Residents of Chicago who pay the majority of the taxes will get on Interstate 75 South at their earliest opportunity due to the legitimate fear of crime and lack of personal safety. Nothing is keeping the cops there either. My Florida sheriff this week told my group in person that all his deputy sheriff positions are filled but he has some openings in the jail.
Nothing less than coherent policy and courageous leadership delivers public safety.
Keep all of our law enforcement heroes in your prayers!
References:
https://www.city-journal.org/chicagos-hard-left-choice
https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/officer-exodus-1000-chicago-cops-left-the-job-last-year/
https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/article_26283e84-cd87-11ed-8333-37b4bebcc7c6.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/chicago-police-officers-florida-move/
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/chicago-police-department-officer-shortage-crime-spike/
https://www.city-journal.org/chicago-police-department-v-kim-foxx
https://www.mystateline.com/news/chicago-named-murder-capital-of-the-u-s-in-new-report/
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-crime-spikes-in-2022-but-first-drop-in-murder-since-pandemic/
https://www.vox.com/22622363/police-violence-interrupters-cure-violence-research-study
But studies on interrupters have been largely disappointing. Reviews of the evidence have found that the approach often produces no significant effect on shootings and murders, and some programs were even associated with more violence.
Violence interruption was conceived by Gary Slutkin, head of Cure Violence, in Chicago in the 1990s as a public health response to shootings. The idea is that violence spreads like a disease — as, say, retaliatory shootings beget more retaliatory shootings — but interrupters can cut that cycle of violence short.
https://charlottenc.gov/newsroom/cityhighlights/Pages/Alternatives-to-Violence.aspx
Love this and will be cross-posting!
I was born and bred in Chicago. Breaks my heart to see the deterioration.
EXCELLENT! Just wait and see what happens… You don’t need to be a psychic to read the tea leaves here. People are going to start leaving Chicago en masse. Law enforcement will be absolutely devastated, and they will cut ties out of self-preservation. No profit-minded business will entertain operations in a city that can’t provide for basic police fire and medical services.
Thanks for creating a nexus for us to look into more! Keep it up!