Chicago Mayor’s Convention and Tourism Strategy: Hit Them in the Head with a Brick
Chicago’s revolving-door criminal justice system threatens the tourists, conventioneers, jobs, and tax revenue that keep our city in business. On November 3, voters have an opportunity to hold at least one judge accountable
If you’ve wondered what Mayor Brandon Johnson has in mind for Chicago’s convention and tourism industry, apparently his strategy is to welcome visitors by hitting them in the back of the head with a brick. That’s what happened to a 77-year-old tourist from New Hampshire who made the mistake of visiting downtown Chicago, where repeat offenders apparently enjoy a revolving-door criminal justice system that allows them to return to the streets almost as quickly as the police can arrest them. And this particular member of Chicago’s unofficial welcoming committee, a gentleman named Terry Strother, had been arrested nine times in 2025 and eight more times in 2026 before his alleged encounter with the tourist.
That’s quite a record, even by Chicago standards. Perhaps the Notorious MBJ should give him a key to the city. After all, if you’re going to turn the downtown streets into an obstacle course for tourists and conventioneers, you might as well recognize the people doing the heavy lifting.
Chicago has traditionally been a magnet for conventions and tourism, and with good reason. We have a central location in our nation which has led to our hosting many of the world’s largest and most prestigious professional associations (including the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Bar Association, and the National Association of Realtors). We have magnificent architecture, great restaurants, extraordinary cultural institutions, world-class hotels, and one of the most beautiful lakefronts in the world. In fact, Condé Nast Traveler has just named Chicago the best big cities in America for the 10th consecutive year.
For those of us who live here, particularly contrarians whose minds have not been clouded by progressive mind rot, that says something rather troubling about the competition. Because if Chicago is the best place to visit, you have to wonder what the other cities are like. As the old saying goes, it’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live here. Particularly if you have common sense, a survival instinct, or an understandable objection to having your skull rearranged by a half-brick while strolling through River North.
Witness the latest incident, documented in a superb piece of reporting by CWB Chicago, involving Terry Strother, 50, whose criminal history reads like the résumé of a man determined to make the Cook County criminal justice system look ridiculous. According to court records cited by CWB, Strother allegedly struck a 77-year-old retired teacher from New Hampshire in the head with half a brick near State and Erie on September 2. Police found the victim bleeding heavily from a head wound. He required four staples at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. As officers handcuffed Strother, he reportedly announced, “I stoned his ass!” That’s quite a welcoming message for someone visiting America’s best big city. Perhaps Choose Chicago can work it into its next advertising campaign.
Now you have to forgive a 77-year-old gentleman from New Hampshire for not understanding the peculiar culture of modern Chicago. Perhaps he had been watching Governor JB Pritzker strolling along the lakefront on television, assuring everyone how safe the city is while surrounded by security. Or perhaps he hadn’t heard about the substantial police protection enjoyed by our own Notorious MB as he assures visitors and voters that our city is safe. It’s remarkable how politicians who lecture ordinary citizens about public safety and pander to the left’s ACAB (All Cops are Bastards)/Defund the Police agitprop rarely seem inclined to dispense with their own security details. They get police protection. The rest of us get lectures about root causes, systemic inequities, and the importance of not stigmatizing people who might be inclined to pick up construction materials and use them as weapons.
Our visitor from New Hampshire apparently hadn’t received the memo. He saw Strother talking and yelling to himself, according to police, but had no reason to expect that an ordinary walk downtown would end in an ambulance. Nor should he have needed one. That’s the whole point of civilization.
But let’s examine the remarkable career of Mr. Strother, whose activities have kept the Chicago Police Department, prosecutors, public defenders and judges busy at taxpayer expense. According to CWB Chicago, his final arrest of 2025 involved allegedly throwing coffee into the face of a 31-year-old woman on North State Street. He was charged with misdemeanor battery. After failing to appear in court, he eventually pleaded guilty in February and received a 220-day sentence, satisfied by time served and the standard sentence reduction. Three days later, he was arrested again, this time accused of threatening to kill a River North parking garage employee who asked him to leave. He subsequently missed two court appearances before pleading guilty in August and receiving a 30-day sentence. By then he had accumulated another case involving a River North hotel, for which he received a concurrent sentence.
You might think this pattern would have suggested that releasing Strother repeatedly was not producing the desired results. But apparently not in Cook County, where the criminal justice system sometimes seems less interested in protecting the public than in maintaining a brisk turnover of customers.
Ten days after returning to the streets, Strother was arrested for allegedly shoplifting merchandise from a West Loop Target. He was released on August 19, failed to appear in court, and was subsequently arrested again on August 23 after a woman recognized him from an earlier incident. According to the police report described by CWB Chicago, she alleged that Strother had stolen a package from her porch and engaged in public indecency. He was charged with misdemeanor theft and public indecency, and prosecutors sought to revoke his pretrial release. Enter Judge Robert D. Kuzas, who denied that request and allowed Strother to leave custody without electronic monitoring or other restrictions. About a week later, according to prosecutors, Strother picked up half a brick and struck our unfortunate visitor from New Hampshire in the head.
Now Judge Kuzas deserves some serious scrutiny. We would like to know precisely why he believed that a defendant with this record, multiple missed court appearances, and pending cases should be released without restrictions. What legal considerations governed his decision? What arguments did prosecutors make? What explanation did he provide? Judges are supposed to exercise independent judgment, and a subsequent crime does not automatically establish that an earlier judicial decision was unlawful. But judicial independence is not a license to escape public accountability. When a judge releases a repeat offender and that defendant allegedly commits a serious violent crime days later, the public has every right to demand answers. And we intend to keep asking until we get them, because at the point he seems like an accessory before the fact to this crime, along with Governor Pritzker who signed the execrable SAFE-T Act that eliminated the cash bail which facilitated keeping serial criminal homicidal maniacs off the streets and gave judges the latitude to let them back on the streets to drive visitors away.
Fortunately, another judge subsequently demonstrated that detention is not an entirely forgotten concept in Cook County. Judge Sharon Kanter ordered Strother detained on three counts of aggravated battery, citing his record of six violent misdemeanor convictions dating from 2024 and five felony convictions. She also noted Strother was on pretrial release in two open cases when the tourist was attacked. Two cases! Count them, two! Did that qualify someone for two ankle bracelets? Do we offer a volume discount? Whatever the answer, Judge Kanter evidently concluded this particular defendant belonged in custody while his case proceeded. That strikes us as a considerably more sensible response to the available evidence.
And here’s where this story becomes about something much larger than one unfortunate tourist and one repeat offender. Chicago’s convention and tourism industry is an enormous economic asset. According to Choose Chicago, the city welcomed 56.8 million visitors in 2025, generating a record $21.5 billion in visitor spending and supporting more than 135,000 jobs. Those are impressive numbers, and they demonstrate precisely what we stand to lose if Chicago develops a reputation as a place where visitors cannot safely walk down the street. Convention planners have choices. They can take their business to Orlando, Las Vegas, Nashville, Indianapolis, or dozens of other Red State venues where laws are still enforced because voters understand that public safety is the principal prerequisite for prosperity.
Convention managers have an obligation to honor the safety of their attendees, and every nationally publicized attack on an innocent pedestrian gives them another reason to ask whether Chicago is worth the risk. Civic reputation matters — a lot. You can spend millions advertising a destination and have that message undermined by one horrifying incident that makes national news.
Who suffers if conventions and tourists begin taking their business elsewhere? Not Governor Pritzker, Mayor Johnson, or the political operatives who populate their administrations. It’s the people who work in the hotels, restaurants, bars, convention halls, transportation services, and tourist attractions. It’s the housekeepers, dishwashers, servers, bartenders, cooks, baggage handlers, and hourly workers who depend on visitors spending money in Chicago. It's the property taxpayers who have to pick up the slack for all the tax revenues that are foregone from out-of-towners who are afraid to come to Chicago for fear of getting their heads smashed in by some nut.
These are precisely the people our progressive politicians purport to represent. First, they fought for $15 an hour. Then they were fighting for $17. Now, with wages and operating costs rising, employers must work harder to make the economics of hospitality work. Whatever one thinks about minimum-wage policy, higher labor costs do not make it easier to compete for price-sensitive convention business. And the last thing these workers need is a public-safety problem that gives prospective customers another reason to stay home.
This is the extraordinary contradiction at the heart of Chicago progressivism. Our political leadership claims to champion working people, yet too often seems incapable of understanding that working people need customers, employers, and functioning businesses. A hotel housekeeper doesn’t benefit from a convention that moves to Indianapolis. A bartender doesn’t earn tips from visitors who decide to stay in Orlando. A restaurant server doesn’t get paid because a politician gives a speech about equity. And a convention worker doesn’t have much use for a $17 minimum wage if there are no shifts available. The people who run this city seem to think they can regulate, tax, and lecture their way to prosperity while treating public safety as an inconvenient afterthought. But businesses cannot operate on progressive slogans, and tourists cannot spend money in a city they’re afraid to visit.
Mayor Johnson needs to understand that protecting the public is not some reactionary exercise in outdated myths of privilege and adverse impact. It is one of the fundamental responsibilities of government. The city cannot promise opportunity to working people while presiding over a farce if a criminal justice system that repeatedly returns serial violent offenders to the streets. Nor can the mayor simply blame judges for every failure. Judges operate under laws, prosecutors make charging and detention arguments, police make arrests, and the mayor is responsible for leading the city and advocating policies that make public safety a priority. All of these institutions have responsibilities, and all deserve scrutiny when the system fails.
Terry Strother’s documented convictions and repeated encounters with the criminal justice system should have prompted serious attention and decisive action long before a retired teacher from New Hampshire ended up in the hospital, contributing to the increasing cost of medical care. If he requires psychiatric treatment, he should receive a proper evaluation and appropriate care. If his criminal conduct warrants incarceration, he should be incarcerated under the law. What should not happen is another predictable trip through the revolving door, followed by another innocent victim.
Chicago has spent generations building one of the world’s great convention and tourism destinations. McCormick Place is an extraordinary asset, and the hospitality industry supports families across the metropolitan area. It would be a tragedy to squander that inheritance through political incompetence and indifference to public safety. Keep treating violent repeat offenders as a manageable inconvenience, and eventually you may as well bring in the wrecking ball to McCormick Place, because convention planners will find someplace else to go.
But here’s something unusual about this particular example of judicial decision-making: The voters actually have an opportunity to do something about it, and they don’t have to wait until the next mayoral election. Judge Robert D. Kuzas is on the November 3 judicial retention ballot. His ballot number is 245, and he must receive at least 60 percent yes votes to remain on the bench. Interestingly, the Chicago Bar Association has rated him "Qualified," as have the Alliance of Bar Associations’ participating groups. Those evaluations deserve consideration. But so does the record of decisions that CWB Chicago has documented, including an earlier case in which Kuzas released a defendant who subsequently attacked two tourists at a CTA station.
The question isn’t whether every judicial decision can predict the future. Obviously it cannot. The question is whether the public is satisfied with how judges exercise their discretion when defendants present substantial warning signs. That’s precisely the kind of question a retention election should encourage voters to examine.
Judge Sharon Kanter, who ordered Strother detained after the brick attack, is not on this November’s retention ballot. Her decision provides a useful contrast, although the judges were considering different charges and circumstances. The larger point is that judicial accountability should not be some obscure ritual in which voters automatically approve every name on the ballot because they have no idea who these people are. Judges exercise enormous power over public safety, individual liberty, and the administration of justice. Their records deserve serious examination, particularly when their decisions have consequences for innocent citizens.
So here’s our call to action: Before you vote on November 3, look up Judge Robert D. Kuzas, ballot number 245. Examine his record, including the reporting by CWB Chicago, and decide whether he has earned another term. Read the evaluations, ask questions, and make an informed choice rather than blindly voting YES on every judge. That’s how judicial accountability is supposed to work. Readers can consult the Chicago Bar Association’s judicial evaluations and CWB Chicago’s reporting on judges seeking retention.
Meanwhile, our best wishes go out to the retired teacher from New Hampshire. We hope he recovers completely, and we hope he doesn’t judge all Chicagoans by the fellow who allegedly introduced him to our city with half a brick. And our thanks to CWB Chicago for the reporting that brought this outrageous story to public attention. Without independent journalists willing to examine court records and document what actually happens in our criminal justice system, the public would know far less about how these failures occur.
George Shay is a Chicago writer and conservative activist. You can follow his commentary on national affairs by subscribing (for free) to his Common Sense Substack.
