CHICAGO – Another murder victim has been found lying alone on a street previously monitored by the ShotSpotter gunfire detection system. He is at least the third person fatally shot without 911 calls reporting gunfire since Mayor Brandon Johnson ended the city’s relationship with ShotSpotter on September 22.
According to Chicago Police, police received a call from a person in the 3500 block of West Cermak on Tuesday around 11:47 p.m. Officers found the victim, who had suffered gunshot wounds to his back, chest and arm. He was pronounced dead shortly after midnight.
Officials have not released the victim’s age; However, a source familiar with the investigation said he appeared to be a teenager.
Officers found shell casings and a firearm on the victim.
The most recent reports of shots fired in the local police zone came about 30 minutes before the victim was found. Those callers believed the shots were coming from Douglass Park, which is several blocks away from the shooting.
Ald. Monique Scott (24th) represents the block where the victim was found. She was an outspoken supporter of ShotSpotter.
“We are essentially going to play Russian roulette without the lives of voters,” said Scott a few weeks ago, she and 32 of her city council colleagues voted in favor of a move that could have kept ShotSpotter active in the city. Only fourteen aldermen, many of whom represent the city’s safest neighborhoods where ShotSpotter has never been deployed, voted against the measure.
During the city council debate, Scott said spoke directly to Johnsonwho promised to pull the plug on ShotSpotter during his election as mayor in 2023.
‘You said yes [made] a campaign promise,” Scott said, “but you can’t put a life before a campaign promise. Put the people you promised on hold to protect everyone in the city.”
Earlier on Tuesday, another murder victim was found lying alone on another West Side street.
About 9:30 a.m. Saturday, a man called 911 to report that a woman had been lying in the same spot in his alley behind the 9500 block of South Avenue N at least the day before, according to police records. Officers discovered that the woman, 19-year-old Sierra Evans, had been fatally shot. Shell casings lay next to her. But someone reported the shots that killed Evans.
More than nine hours before Evans was found, ShotSpotter devices still deployed in the area picked up the sounds of gunfire at the murder scene. But because the city no longer uses the company’s services, police were unaware of the shooting.
About this series
On September 23, 2024 at 12:01 a.m., Chicago ended its relationship with ShotSpotter, a gunfire detection system deployed in 12 of the city’s most violence-affected neighborhoods.
Mayor Brandon Johnson stubbornly refused to reconsider his decision to dismantle ShotSpotter, even as the vast majority of councilors, many citizens, victims’ advocates and his hand-picked police commissioner asked for it to remain in place.
This reporting series, called “Brandon’s Bodies,” seeks to document shooting victim cases and police investigations that could have benefited from gunshot detection technology.
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