This Is Who Chicago’s New Mayor Wants to Replace Cops With; Social Workers, What Could Go Wrong With That?

The voters in Chicago are not the dumbest voters in the world. Thank Heavens for California. Chicago is rife with crime due to the policies of the former mayor Lori Lightfoot. The number of shootings has gone through the roof and you would think the people of Chicago would elect a mayor who takes crimes seriously. A large number of those shootings are gang-related. Social workers will face the same danger the police have, but the difference is that they won’t have guns.

The new mayor,  Brandon Johnson (D), promises to put more social workers at crime scenes. But, where is the money coming from? You guessed it, from the police budget in a city that is already short on policemen and policewomen. What happens after a couple of these social workers are killed? I would imagine it would cause many social workers will quit their job and the number of new recruits will decline.

Johnson points to a number of Black men killed by police as the reason to make the switch. I assume that a large number of the new social workers will be Black since Blacks make up 13% of the Chicago population. What will Johnson say if they are shot or otherwise attacked? Criminals will shoot it out with cops rather than be captured, so what would be different with the social workers?

Johnson said:

“This is really about making sure that people understand the context of the level of frustration when you see that type of brutalization over and over again, it can be discouraging.

“We’re working to double the amount of young people we hire, not just for summer jobs, but for year-round positions. We’ve been pushing this ordinance called ‘Treatment, Not Trauma.’ In essence, first responders, social workers, counselors, EMT[s], these individuals would show up to calls that require those type of interventions.”

Chicago mayor-elect invokes Michael Brown as proof that more police won't work and all but tells 'CBS Mornings' that he won't be giving police more funding, saying there needs to be "[f]irst responders, social workers, counselors, EMT[s]" need to show up to crime scenes pic.twitter.com/y5tgHJ9HTz

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 6, 2023

From Townhall

Johnson has made it clear in the past some crimes are not a big deal. When he was Cook County Commissioner in 2020, he refused multiple to condemn the widespread looting that broke out during the BLM riots, saying there were reasons why people were robbing stores at such an acute level.

From The Washington Examiner

On Thursday, Johnson talked about the “direct correlation” between increasing youth employment and mental health services with decreased crime rates while criticizing the notion that to prevent crime, communities have to be “tough.”

Johnson came under scrutiny throughout the campaign from critics and his fellow mayoral candidates for previous comments he made supporting the “defund the police” movement, a contentious topic that far-left Democrats support and divides the Democratic Party across several U.S. cities.

When he was pressed again on his pulling back from the movement, Johnson said it wasn’t a “retreat” but was a better understanding “of the impetus behind that hashtag,” highlighting what he said were the failure of other strategies that law enforcement has put in place to provide more accountability, such as dashboard and body cameras.