Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Knows Exactly How Much of a Hypocrite He Is on Crime

Chicago hasn’t been doing too well recently — if by “recently” we mean “roughly since the Holocene” — to the point where it sometimes seems pointless as a Chicagoan to shovel even more dirt (or spent shell-casings, which are more easily found around here) into the open grave. Taxes, violent crime, the murder rate, the Bears, that overrated TV show The Bear — it’s a city that can’t catch a break primarily because it stubbornly refuses to allow itself one.

And then of course things got even worse when, little less than a year ago, the city narrowly elected ultra-progressive ex-teacher’s union lobbyist Brandon Johnson as its mayor, granting us even ampler opportunity to demonstrate the truth of H. L. Mencken’s maxim about the voters getting their “democracy” good and hard. Johnson has been as bad as feared — helpless and cow-eyed in the face of a mass youth-crime explosion he refused to condemn, and drowning in the flood of illegal aliens draining the city’s resources — and he already sports a record-breakingly low 20-percent approval rating among voters.

Your question might be the same as mine, especially if you live here: Who on earth are the remaining 20 percent? Johnson has an African-American voting base, yes, but it’s not quite as solid as people assume; his real remaining support comes from the progressive class and the rich (and largely white, north-side) voters who share their cultural views. So he owes them favors, and today he “delivered” on yet another one of his rancid campaign promises to the activist woke Left: Johnson has announced that he is finally getting rid of ShotSpotter, one of the few effective systems for responding to the plague of gun crime in the city.

The first thing to establish about ShotSpotter is that it works: It is an elegant technology whereby a network of strategically placed microphones (placed around the statistically highest-crime neighborhoods of the city) can be used to triangulate the origin point of gunfire and direct police response to there. This technology is critical for the cops because, to put it politely, residents of neighborhoods where gunfire regularly breaks out at all hours of the day without surcease are also statistically disinclined to dial 9-1-1. (There are many overlapping reasons for this, all of them the proper subject for a book nobody will read rather than an article nobody will read.) This technology alerts CPD immediately to shots fired, enabling them not only to respond themselves but also — crucially — to direct emergency medical care there as well. Oftentimes, the alternative is simply dying in the street.

It has been a boon to the city. It is doubtless not a perfect geolocator, but its baseline accuracy is not what is in dispute; it is the police response that activists are enraged about. They hew to the line (now hardened into an archetype post-George Floyd) that the police are forever an oppressive force unwelcome in the black community on principle alone. And since ShotSpotter is the ultimate snitch to activists who have internalized “stop snitchin’” as an actual core ideological plank, it had to go. (That this is done in defiance of the actual residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods on the south and west sides, who would very much appreciate more cops on the streets and less crime, is one of those ghastly ironies that is often commented upon but rarely acted upon.)

Getting rid of ShotSpotter in a city drowning in gun crime seems like such a violation of common sense that one is almost tempted to say that Johnson isn’t engaging in the worst and most depraved sort of political horse-trading imaginable — mortgaging the safety of his poor black and Hispanic constituents to please the desires of a rich, mostly white, and out of touch activist base. Maybe he genuinely just is an authentically rote-programmed progressive lunatic.

But, you see, he’s not. For, as the Chicago Tribune notes, Johnson’s announcement yesterday was tellingly couched: He’s not getting rid of ShotSpotter quite yet; he is in fact renewing its contract until the end of September, after which point it expires. Why continue using it through September, when it is apparently a tool of racial oppression whose suspension is long overdue? Anyone with a working brain and an eye on the political calendar knows why: The Democratic National Convention is being held in Chicago this year. (Surely there is no danger whatsoever of Chicago 2024 turning into a replay of Chicago 1968, this time with pro-Hamas goons waving Palestinian flags.)

The hypocrisy is staggering and contemptibly revealing. When it comes to the needs and desires of national Democrats, who desperately do not want to be humiliated by rioting outside the convention, Johnson is willing to forget all of his supposed convictions and actively renew ShotSpotter. Why? Because it is understood by all that ShotSpotter actually helps police in addressing violent crime. (In particular, given the inevitably boosted police presence downtown for the convention, the ability of a reduced force to respond with speed and precision to gunfire in traditionally crime-heavy neighborhoods is all the more important.)

But once Joe Biden and the Democratic circus are gone? Then to hell with the actual residents of the city. Brandon Johnson — who by his actions knows that ShotSpotter works; otherwise why renew it for the DNC? — is happy to consign them to be subjects of his newest progressive experiment. If Johnson genuinely believes ShotSpotter is a racist blight on the city, then he ought to do the morally correct thing and cancel it now instead of renewing it for a few months. But of course he knows (or at least deeply fears) that it will be a disaster, and an ill-timed one for the national party. So we in the city have been granted a temporary reprieve. But that won’t stop him from toying with the lives and well-being of Chicagoans for the sake of testing nonsensical progressive ideas that will get people killed; no, it will only delay the date.