The Better Government Association's David Greising sits down with the Chicago Justice Show to discuss a recent post he authored on the BGA's website. Greising's post was titled "Finger Pointing Isn't a Crime-Fighting Plan, Mayor". The post gets a lot of things right about how the Mayor and Superintendent David Brown seem to be more interested in pointing fingers to deflect blame than coming up with a coherent plan to combat Chicago's ongoing issues with violence.

Greising calls out the Mayor appropriately for having her "whole of government" apporach to violence that sounded good in the media when it was announced but doesn't seem like the Mayor is committed to really bringing about the change in the city's governing practices to really impact violence. This is evident in the Mayor repeatedly blaming the Cook County Courts for being closed for 15 months and putting criminals back on the street when in fact most court operations continued through the pandemic and jury trails resumed in March of 2021 according to Greising.

Supt. Brown is also called out be Greising for using anecdotes about violence to prove his case that the courts are releasing too many criminals and that this practice is the basis for the gun violence surge in Chicago during the pandemic. Unfortunately for Supt. Brown Greising correctly calls him out for using anecdotes to combat the sophisticated analysis produce not only by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and the Office of the Chief Judge buy independently by Loyola University Chicago researchers.

Both Supt. Brown and Mayor Lightfoot seem totally overwhelmed by the crime and haven't found a plan that they can stick with over the long-term to reduce violence. We discuss all of these issues with David Greising today.

Also on our show today:

NYT's article about dropping rape cases
Nick turner from Vera on Biden Relying on Cops

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Video of today's show