Progressives press Chicago mayor over pledge to end controversial policing tool

Progressives press Chicago mayor over pledge to end controversial policing tool


Progressives have vowed to hold the new Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, to his campaign pledge that as part of crime-control efforts in the city he will break with the controversial gunshot detection contractor ShotSpotter.

Johnson gave the keynote speech this week at Netroots, the largest annual gathering of progressives in the country, taking place in Chicago, and amplified his campaign talk about a wider approach to safer streets.

“Many people will make you believe that the only way in which you can have safe communities is by simply engaging in politics of old, by believing that the only answer to public safety is policing. That’s a failed strategy,” he told the gathering.

However the progressive Democrat did not repeat his campaign trail commitments to pull the plug on ShotSpotter when the city’s current contract is up next year. For more than a decade, Chicago has used the company’s nearly 30-year-old gunshot detection system, deployed in high-crime areas and designed to direct police to shootings, but that in recent years has faced intense criticism for its methodology and the impact of its technology on communities of color.



“He’s a rising star in progressive politics and we’re going to hold him accountable,” Granate Kim, campaign director at MPower Change, a Chicago-based Muslim digital advocacy organization, told a panel held at Netroots.

Kim added that if Johnson did not break with ShotSpotter: “We would be very upset and take him to task nationally.”

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