Chicago’s Leftist Mayor Says You Can’t Arrest Your Way to Safety. Yes, You Can.

A spate of “teen takeovers” in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend highlighted a serious, growing phenomenon that now plagues cities across America.

Unfortunately, solutions aren’t on the way as Mayor Brandon Johnson, a far-left Democrat, decided to shift blame away from the criminals. More on that in a bit.

A so-called teen takeover is when large mobs of young people coordinate and rapidly show up in a public place all at once. They frequently commit crimes and violently clash with bystanders and police.

Chicago police arrested more than 50 people in these teen takeovers in several major incidents over the weekend, according to Chicago’s WGN 9. In one case, an 18-year-old allegedly rammed a car into a group of police officers, injuring five of them.

Other cities have dealt with this problem, and some leaders are taking active measures to crack down on criminals.

Following a major incident in the District of Columbia, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said she would take decisive action.

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“We don’t want your kids victimized either, and neither should you,” Pirro said, according to NewsNation. “And that requires that you do something about this. And that’s why we’re going to hold you accountable. These are not harmless gatherings, they are violent, and they are disruptive.”

That’s the right way to respond.

Of course, the Trump administration is doing its best to show a deep blue city what it’s like to live under commonsense governance. Crime is down dramatically, police enforcement is up, and even the fountains are working now. That may not sound impressive, but it is if you’ve lived in D.C. at any point in the last few decades.

I wouldn’t count on any kind of grand transformation in Chicago.

President Donald Trump offered to help deal with Chicago’s teen takeover problem, but he’s been ignored. Meanwhile, the mayor did his best to shift blame away from the perpetrators and signal that the city would continue doing the bare minimum to keep them in check.

“We believe we can arrest our way towards safety? We’re wrong,” Johnson said. “We ask police officers to do too much. At some point adults have to work hard to raise their children and that’s what we’re calling for in this moment.”

Yes, we can arrest—and prosecute, don’t forget that critical part—our way to more safety. Parents should be taking care of their children, but that clearly isn’t happening in large parts of the city, nor is the government ensuring that it does.

Most importantly of all, the mayor refuses to encourage *gasp* personal responsibility.

In fact, the evasion of responsibility has been one of the defining features of Johnson’s tenure.

With so many other socialist, big-city mayors making headlines in the last year, it’s easy to forget Johnson. He was a far-left darling who became mayor of the Windy City at the high tide of the Great Awokening.

Johnson’s star has lost some luster since his victory in 2023. His approval ratings sank to 14% last year—no, that isn’t a typo—and even many of his progressive allies abandoned ship.

His time in office has been defined by a string of crises. A budget crisis, an immigration crisis, a crime crisis. By most accounts, he handled these challenges poorly, though there are some good signs of improvement.

Homicides are now down in the city this year, though other kinds of violent crime remain high—much higher than most of the country.

In repudiation of Johnson’s “you can’t arrest your way to safety” comment, the drop in Chicago homicides coincided with a significant increase in arrests.

“As crime fell citywide, arrest rates for total and violent crime rose,” Illinois Policy reported in February. “The arrest rate for total crime climbed from 13.8% to 15.8%. The arrest rate for violent crime also increased to 17.9%, the highest level since the pandemic.”

Despite Johnson’s attitude, it seems that arresting more people is one thing that’s really working. But the urban chaos problem isn’t over.

Johnson’s reaction to the surge in teen mob violence has been to pin the blame on other forces, other people besides the criminals.

When Chicago faced a surge in car thefts a few years ago, he didn’t castigate the thieves. Instead, he faulted automakers for not doing enough to stop them.

“The failure of Kia and Hyundai to install basic auto-theft prevention technology in these models is sheer negligence, and as a result, a citywide and nationwide crime spree around automobile theft has been unfolding right before our eyes,” Johnson said while launching a lawsuit against those companies.

In the case of recent teen violence, Johnson said he’d focus on going after social media companies.

Johnson declared that the Chicago city government would hold these companies “accountable” for their role in harming the “mental health and well-being of our young people.”

Social media can certainly be a catalyst for bad behavior, but again, we see Johnson shifting the blame away from the individual perpetrators of the crimes. And while Johnson said parents need to take more responsibility for their kids, he refuses to lift a finger to ensure that happens.

Johnson continues to oppose curfews and parental responsibility laws that have been proposed in the city. So, even that stuff about making parents take care of their kids was just blather.

If anything, Chicago’s mayor is an excellent example of why leftist ideology leads to ruin.

Taken to its logical conclusions, it skirts around human nature, it rejects Judeo-Christian morality while favoring materialistic “root causes” as the answer to all problems, and it leads to the suppression of truth when plans fail.