Mayor Elect: those 200 new detectives won’t make dent in Chicago crime and won’t get you re-elected

 Mayor Elect: those 200 new detectives won’t make dent in Chicago crime and won’t get you re-elected

With a month to go before he’s sworn in as Chicago’s 57th mayor, Brandon Johnson got a wake up call about the daunting crime problem he faces.

Hundreds of youths rampaged in the Loop Saturday nite during prime entertainment time. Two teens were shot, cars were danced on, the ones not set on fire. Some rowdies scaled a bus; even tried to break into the Art Institute. Theatergoers exiting their venues were told to stay inside till the danger of violence was quelled. How many of those will decide their Saturday nite spending money will go anywhere but downtown?

Mayor Lightfoot issued a firm denunciation calling the melee “reckless, disrespectful and unlawful”, adding “We as a city cannot and will not allow any of our public spaces to become a platform for criminal conduct,”

But Johnson, a month out from taking the helm, offered a tepid response certain to mystify Chicagoans citywide desperate to see everyday violence tamped down. He stated that though he does not condone the “destructive activity that took place downtown, it was not constructive to demonize youth who have been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”

Mayor Elect, nobody is demonizing youth starved of opportunities. People of good will seek social and economic justice for the untold thousands without jobs, without hope, without opportunity to turn away from crime. That will not occur by moving a pittance from the police budget into community services. The problem of institutional racism requires a massive, indeed Marshall Plan type investment by the federal government for any substantive change there to occur in Chicago and other cities facing similar escalating crime.

But Johnson’s main plan to prevent such outbreaks is simply to hire 200 more detectives to improve the crime clearance rate. If he had them Saturday, they would have made no difference in the night’s Loop mayhem. Where is Johnson’s plan to fill roughly 1,000 vacancies of cops not on the street? Where is Johnson’s strategy to raise police morale likely at an all time low. How will Johnson reduce the skyrocketing police retirement rate that’s nearly doubled?

When running for mayor, Johnson pivoted away from his earlier ‘defund the police’ stance during the George Floyd protests. Those are probably the last 3 words he needs to hear when Job 1, Job 2 and Job 3 on Day One come May 15 is how to upfund the police to restore order on Chicago streets, whether in the Loop, Gold Coast and Chicago’s numerous deprived neighborhoods.