According to a new Harris Poll, public safety is the top concern of Chicago’s voters. As the Harris CEO Will Johnson wrote in the Tribune this week, 95% of voters cited that issue. Johnson also reported that his poll showed most Chicagoans feel that our city is worse off than others when it comes to crime.
Whether that actually is the case is beside the point. That is how people in Chicago clearly feel right now and shrewd politicians know that perception has a way of becoming reality.
Whatever your race or walk of life, any conversation about the upcoming mayoral election invariably leads to a discussion of the public safety problem. So it’s not surprising that the mayoral candidates, who are busy this week with speeches, forums and joint appearances, are falling over themselves to appear tough on crime.
Businessman and mayoral candidate Willie Wilson has come up with a pithy line, presumably to help himself stand out from the crowd. If he is elected mayor, he said Tuesday night at the latest debate, he will expect and allow the Chicago police to hunt fleeing suspects down “like rabbits.”
Incredibly, he’s used this analogy several times before. Wilson and his campaign staff must think it resonates with voters.
We think it demeans and dehumanizes all Chicagoans.
Especially in light of the alleged killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis by police officers, Wilson should immediately retire this particularly cheap piece of blather, which actually makes him look weaker, not stronger on crime.
As we editorialized Tuesday, it’s the kind of pumped-up, anything-goes, do-what-you-need-to-do nonsense that often causes trouble when it comes from the top and when police then encounter citizens on the streets. It has no place on the campaign trail.
Predictably, Mayor Lori Lightfoot shot back at her rival Tuesday by saying that he was “talking about Black and Brown boys in our city,” which is certainly many times the case. But Wilson actually did not specify; his harebrained designation could apparently be applied to all races.
Nor did he make the far more crucial distinction between suspects, which is the category police typically run up against on the streets, and convicted criminals.
Is being suspected of a crime enough to get you immediate cottontail status?
At the debate, Wilson then pivoted to talking about his son, Omar, who was fatally shot in the summer of 1995, inside a home in south suburban Hazel Crest that Wilson had bought for his children, hoping they would be safe there. “If somebody comes and kills somebody in her family, then she’ll know how it feels,” he said to the mayor.
The murder of Omar, Wilson’s second oldest son, must have been an unspeakably agonizing loss, and it’s certainly understandable that the violent crime issue thus feels personal to Wilson. It’s entirely legitimate for him to talk about this matter in those terms. Politicians who understand terrible loss are often more empathetic, and thus far better at their jobs, than those who have not had the same kind of loss.
But to say that Lightfoot needs that kind of experience to really get tough on crime is rhetoric that should be out of bounds in a debate. Challengers attacking Lightfoot’s record on public safety are just doing their jobs. But to say that the mayor does not herself know personal adversity and loss is to willfully misunderstand her life history. She is fully aware.
Frankly, what a mayor does or does not do about crime in Chicago has to be rooted in thoughtful policy decisions, weighing the rights and obligations of police officers, prosecutors, criminals, suspects and everyday Chicagoans who just want to live their lives without fear. We all are sum totals of our life experiences, but that doesn’t always equate to the best decisions about law and order. If this issue were easy to solve, we would not be in this situation. And voters would not be so concerned.
Competent mayors have to weigh academic data, expert advice from various points of view, reports from community leaders and police officers on the street and their own ideas. And they must try to strike a balance between the imperative for public safety and the basic human rights of all Chicagoans.
In no way do rabbits, or the hunting thereof, figure into this equation. Chicago is not a warren.
