COMMENTARY

enough to call them.

Politicians are lying when they say that the police prevent crime. They do not. Police are a response to crime. They maintain a crime scene and pick up evidence. They are not a preventative measure.

Chicago police also rarely solve the crimes they are called to. Per a 2019 report, the solve rate for white victims of homicide in Chicago is 47 percent. For Black victims, it’s just 22 percent. That’s unacceptable.

violence, according to Mapping Police Violence. Of those, 132 people killed were cases in which no o enses were alleged. Of those cases, 104 were mental health or welfare checks, 98 cases involved tra c violations, and 207 involved allegations of nonviolent o enses. That means that 46 percent of the cases in which police killed people were originally nonviolent incidents.