Democrats argue, with straight faces, that we simply can't "jail our way" out of violent crime. That makes sense if you're a Democrat, of course, because you also believe some women have penises, and some men can give birth. To the rest of the sane world, however, permanently segregating violent criminals from the rest of civilized society is not only the correct course of action, but it's also the primary function of government: to protect its citizens from harm.
Just the other day, Chicago's Mayor, Brandon Johnson, was back making the same old, tired Democratic Party argument about locking up thugs.
"We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence," Johsnon said. "We've already tried that, and we've ended up with the largest prison population in the world without solving the problems of crime and violence. The addiction on jails and incarceration in this country? We have moved past that. It is racist, it is immoral, it is unholy, and it is not the way to drive violence down."
As part of his efforts to end such "racist" and "unholy" practices in his city, Johnson also did away with the ShotSpotter program in September 2024 — despite pleas and warnings from aldermen, victims' advocates, and community members.
To date, 63 people have died as a direct result of Johnson's termination of the program. The most recent was on Thanksgiving night.
A man was shot and killed in Garfield Ridge on Thanksgiving night.
— CWBChicago (@CWBChicago) November 28, 2025
His body lay in the street for 10 minutes because no one called 911 about the gunfire.
ShotSpotter, which used to monitor the area, would’ve been handy.https://t.co/uAOBXIW9vi
A man was shot and killed in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood shortly before midnight on Thanksgiving, but no one called 911 for about ten minutes after the gunfire, according to Chicago police. The neighborhood was served by the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection system for years until Mayor Brandon Johnson disconnected it in September 2024. The technology could alert police to shootings even when humans did not.
Police were dispatched around 12:03 a.m. after a caller reported finding a man shot in the 5100 block of South Luna Avenue and said they heard gunfire and a woman screaming roughly ten minutes earlier. No other calls about the shots were made.
CPD said officers arrived at the scene to find an unresponsive 27-year-old man on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
This means, once a week for an entire year, at least one person has died because they were shot, and either no one heard the shots or people did and didn't bother to call.
Back before Johnson pulled the plug on ShotSpotter, Alderman Silvana Tabares issued a stark warning. "Starting tonight, every gunshot victim left bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worthy sacrifice in the eyes of the mayor for his radical agenda. Every single one.”
The Thanksgiving night shooting happened in a neighborhood in Ald. Tabares' 23rd Ward.
But what's even more telling is if you go through the database compiled by CWBChicago, one that tracks every shooting victim in the Windy City since September 23, 2024. Here are some blunt stats that are rather inconvenient for Mayor Johnson:
Of the 63 victims, just seven are either White or "unknown." The majority are Black and male, and the rest are Hispanic. The youngest victim was a 13-year-old Black male shot on March 17, 2025. The oldest was a 66-year-old and one of the few White males on the list.
Some, perhaps most, of them might have received timely medical care had ShotSpotter been in place. Many of them might still be alive today.
But instead of protecting the lives of these victims, Mayor Johnson has decided he wants to protect the lives of the violent thugs who gun people down in the streets.
I'm no theologian, and I'm hardly a subscriber to woke ideology, but that seems more "unholy" and racist than putting criminals behind bars.