Ghost of Adam Toledo hovers over ShotSpotter debate

In 1983, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted a big exhibit of Vatican treasures. My brother and I went, but split up at one point. “I’ll meet you under the picture of Jesus,” I said, and he laughed, the joke being: They’re all pictures of Jesus. (OK, plus a few cherubs and lions and popes thrown in).

I thought of that quip when Brandon Johnson announce hiring a liaison to the progressive movement. Really? Isn’t his administration already one big prance around the progressive maypole?

Speaking of progressivism, can we think about ShotSpotter? Somebody should.

Walk through the process. You hear a loud bang. You think “Fireworks?” A few more and experience tells you: “gunshots.”

What do you want to happen next? I suppose that would depend on several things. Are you shot? Are you the person shooting? Do you live in a neighborhood where this happens all the time? Where it never happens? Do you welcome the police? Or fear them?

The gunshot detection technology that Johnson, through characteristic ineptitude, has bumbled into an ongoing issue prompted the City Council to try to snatch the issue out of the mayor’s hands Wednesday, the way you’d take something away from a bungler saying, “Here, let me do it.”

Over this flutters, like a Vatican cherub, the ghost of Adam Toledo. Three years ago, the seventh grader was walking at 2:30 a.m. in Little Village when his companion shot several times at a passing car. ShotSpotter alerted police, who rushed over. Officer Eric Stillman chased Toledo into an alley.

If you watch the body cam video … here’s how I described it at the time:

“The footage makes for sickening viewing: the jumpy chase through an alley; the barked, ignored commands; the boy’s hands going up followed instantly by the gunshot. The red blood. Watching it once, I can’t imagine ever watching it again. Once is too much.”
Opinion immediately fractured — Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) lauded Stillman’s “amazing restraint” — I guess for not firing the traditional 16 shots. Former Rep. Luis Gutierrez called it “an execution.”

At the risk of putting my fingers into those spinning gears, I’ll just say, I didn’t think Stillman should have been charged with a crime. One of the many bad effects that radiate from bad policing is that stark abuses tend to blow back onto tragic mistakes.
Reformers point to Toledo and argue that police shouldn’t go racing after gunshots. Though residents typically want the cops to keep people from blasting at each other in their alleys in the dead of night. What to do?

It might be clearer to set the technology aspect aside and ask the larger question: Do we want police to respond to lawlessness? Or just shrug and say, “It’s Chicago.”

Ignoring gunshots isn’t a valid option. Out-of-control gun violence plagues the city. Last year, a Rogers Park group called Native Sons begged area residents to not shoot at each other between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. — save the carnage for nighttime! — so people could go about their business without the risk of being caught in a crossfire. How sad is that?

The ShotSpotter debate echoes the great national question to be decided this fall: are we a nation of laws? Or of atomized individuals doing whatever they want? It’s still against the law for most Chicagoans to carry a gun — though not to shoot one. At least, I couldn’t find an actual city ordinance against it, along the way encountering laws against firing cannons and toy guns.

State law obsesses over firing at buildings, from cars, and shooting at a wide spectrum of specific classes of individuals, then quickly adds, almost as an afterthought: “Sec. 24-1.5. Reckless discharge of a firearm. (720 ILCS 5/24-1.5) (a) A person commits reckless discharge of a firearm by discharging a firearm in a reckless manner which endangers the bodily safety of an individual.”

Is that state overreach? I don’t think so.

If Chicago is going to make opening up with your giggle-switch Glock accepted quotidian behavior, we should repeal the law making recklessly firing guns illegal. But we don’t want to live in that world. I sure don’t; I live in Northbrook — no need to remind me —where people rarely shoot each other. Trust me, it’s nice. If Chicago is going to reverse its slide into anarchy and decline, then we need police to enforce the laws, using what technology can help them. Being human, the police will inevitably make mistakes. A bigger mistake is to use that as an excuse to not even let them try.