When you have to fabricate racism to fight to justify your worldview, you end up doing more harm than good. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson shows that better than anyone.
Johnson is the personification of “antiracist” criminal justice “reform,” and that comes with deadly consequences for Chicago residents. On Tuesday night, Chicago police found 43-year-old Eduardo Gamez dead in his car. Gamez’s car had multiple bullet holes, and he had been shot in the abdomen. Gamez’s car was running when police discovered him, and surveillance showed that he had been parked for at least 2 1/2 hours.
Gamez bled out and died because no one called 911 to report gunshots. Police only arrived because someone called to complain that his car was running and double-parked. The neighborhood Gamez was shot and killed in used to be covered by the city’s ShotSpotter network, which Johnson removed last year. The ShotSpotter system was a series of acoustic sensors placed on light poles in the most dangerous parts of the city, which could trigger 911 calls and allow police to identify the origins of gunshots better.
That means that, had ShotSpotter not been removed, police would have been called to the shooting scene sooner, and Gamez may have ended up receiving the life-saving care he needed. CWB Chicago has compiled a list of similar cases “of people being found shot in areas previously served by ShotSpotter where the technology, had it not been dismantled, could have played a critical, helpful role.” Since just Sept. 23, 2024, that list already has 27 shootings, 12 of which were fatal.
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Johnson claimed he removed ShotSpotter because Chicago needs “investments in evidence-based, holistic solutions that don’t just respond to violence but prevent it.” If you are wondering why Chicago can’t just try to prevent violence while also keeping systems that help respond to it, it’s because of racism: As a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America said, police responding to ShotSpotter alerts mean that “police come to black and brown communities on high alert.”
ShotSpotter is used in Chicago’s most violent areas, which happen to have heavy minority populations. This, according to Johnson’s worldview, is racist, and so ShotSpotter needed to be dismantled. (This requires you to ignore that the most violent areas having large minority populations also means that the victims of these shootings, such as Gamez, are also minorities). Johnson’s worldview is contaminated with racial rot, and now Chicago’s public safety policies are as well, with lethal results.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
