Move Over Governor Moonbeam, Superintendent Moon Shot Has Arrived in Chicago
While aspiring for 300, why not dream for zero homicides?
As a young, liberal firebrand seeking the California governor’s mansion in 1974, Jerry Brown aroused the curiosity of the celebrated Chicago columnist, Mike Royko. Not long after narrowly defeating GOP opponent Houston Flournoy, Brown assumed office in Sacramento preferring to think of himself as a bold leader with an extraordinary range of political vision. Having none of this, Royko penned a column in the Chicago Daily News in 1976 in which he scoffed at Brown for attracting the “moonbeam vote” as Brown sought the Democratic presidential nomination. A sobriquet Brown would never entirely shed, by virtue of Royko’s column, Brown was consecrated Governor Moonbeam. Though Royko considered Brown to be a bit unconventional, he intended the nickname to reflect poorly upon the wacky crowd of Californians from whom Brown drew support. Doing himself little favor three years later, Brown suggested the Golden State would place into orbit a Landsat platform to provide emergency communications for the state. A proclamation which validated Royko’s written conjecture Brown was a bit of a flake and the core of Brown’s support rest with an amen chorus formed from Marin County hot tubbers, Hollywood actors and actresses complete with their therapists and pseudo-religions, and early environmental alarmists who were predicting the climate apocalypse would strike by 1980, Governor Moonbeam and the “moonbeam vote” became seared into the consciousness of Royko’s readers across the nation.
Though Jerry Brown enjoyed multiple turns in the California governor’s mansion and served in other statewide offices, and Royko publicly expressed regret for his words, it required years for Brown to re-gain a measure of respectability as a public servant. Although Royko sadly passed in 1997, he would have found hilarity with the impracticality of new Superintendent of Police David Brown. A man whose management ethos is extracted from the 1994 book, Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Apollo Moon Landings, Brown’s term, it is fair to say, is off to a disastrous start. In one of his first meetings with Chicago Police Department (CPD) leadership upon taking office, Brown told subordinates of his goal to bring Chicago’s homicide rates down beneath 300 for 2020.
Chicago is not headed to the moon. Chicago is headed to higher crimes rates.
Let’s specify up front Brown’s goal to reduce Chicago’s homicide rate to under 300 is not only unrealistic, but farcically ridiculous. Moreover, it is a goal in which Chicago’s 63rd Superintendent of Police announced with cosmic optimism but without anything closely resembling a strategy to service the ambitious goal. The fact Brown did not offer a specific plan to reduce Chicago’s homicide rate is not too terribly surprising and should provoke Mayor Lightfoot to experience buyer’s remorse for Brown’s hire. To begin his tenure, Brown was forced to issue an apology to several North and Northwest Side aldermen for the Department employing a new tactic known as “the surge.” A maneuver with little compelling logic, under the “surge,” the Department targets high-crime neighborhoods with an excess of police vehicles. A remarkably short-sighted and parochial strategy to address the chronic unrest which grips the South and West Sides of the city, the defining feature of the “surge” is not a permanent increase to manpower or an innovative anti-crime strategy to flush out crime, but rather a fleeting moment in which the cacophony of roaring engines, flashing lights, and sirens symbolize a police presence. A Potempkin-esque show, although Mayor Lightfoot stated the “surge” had produced some “promising results,” Superintendent Brown’s new tactic drew the wrath of aldermen who represent North and Northwest Side wards which were stripped of police protection to carry out the “surge” in the Harrison, Gresham, Englewood, Austin, and Deering Districts. Brown apologized for his failure to inform aldermen their wards would temporarily face reductions in manpower to conduct the “surge” and pledged to “communicate” police plans more effectively. A meaningless gesture, Brown’s “surge” dovetailed with his vow to develop a replacement for “merit” promotions and his resolutely dodging questions over civilian oversight of the Department during his virtual confirmation hearing in front of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.
Though Brown was vague with his City Council interlocutors, the subtext of his responses provided chilling details over how he intends to carry out his duties as superintendent. When addressing concerns over the Department’s much-maligned “merit” promotion system, Brown declared he intended to study the methods employed for promotion in other cities. In other words, Chicago must be prepared for a new promotion system loosely based on the mechanism used by the Dallas Police Department.
Worse, when the matter of civilian oversight was raised by aldermen, Brown stated he “wholeheartedly believes” in a role for residents in the oversight of police and averred:
“This is my wheelhouse. This (community policing) is where I think effective policing should be. You have to be community-policing-facing in all of your efforts. I will develop and identify community policing savants to push, pull, and if necessary to drag the police department to a community policing-oriented culture that yields outcomes that make us all safer.”
Words which seemed so futile and feeble, though Brown’s confirmation to lead the Chicago Police Department epitomized his standing at the pinnacle of his profession, Brown’s answer was a Delphic hint he supports the crackpot proposal advanced by the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) demanding oversight of the CPD. A plan which would create a seven-member Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability with the sweeping power to hire and dismiss the police superintendent and both the heads of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) and the president of the Police Board, the proposed board also commissions the establishment of citizen-led panels to preside over each of Chicago’s 22 police districts. Three-member bodies which bear a likeness to post-revolutionary “truth commissions,” this, of course, means endless feel-good meetings with dishonest players in dirty, anti-police game. More crucially, it also means many of the same irate hecklers of police will assume control of the functions of policing and police policy.
It has been only three weeks since he assumed office, but Brown’s tenure already does not look promising. Rather than acknowledge the reality of Chicago being a violent city in need of an anti-crime plan grounded in reality, Brown seems to be pursuing the policies of a defensive strategy calibrated to a personal fantasy over how he would prefer Chicago to be rather than what Chicago has become.
Crime is neither confronted nor defeated with bromides such as “buckle up” or “we’re going to the moon.” Hope is not a strategy to reduce homicides. Denial is not an anti-crime strategy. In fact, both are prescriptions for defeat. Though Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown may have deluded themselves into believing the “surge” is an ingenious strategy to combat crime and ensure public safety, it is just the latest in a long line of diversions disguising the complete absence of a strategy to deal with the crime epidemic in the Windy City. While these lessons were learned after the failure of “impact zones,” “gang conflict zones,” and “flood the zone,” Ms. Lightfoot’s insistence on the success of the “surge” only reveals the machisma mayor’s real objective is to maintain the status quo and simply manage crime. A woman who has spent the last year-and-a-half in office underreacting to grave threats, only to turn and lecture critics, often in the most sanctimonious terms, over why she is right, who is to blame, and why her detractors are unenlightened fools for suggesting alternatives to her policies and proposals, Lightfoot’s hire of Brown signaled yet another stage in the steady decomposition of the City of Chicago.
When Mike Royko penned his column branding Jerry Brown’s followers the “moonbeam vote,” it occurred when Brown was at the dawn of his political career. Brown was able to recover and vindicate himself. A man fascinated with the exploration of outer space, Superintendent Brown declaring his intent to see Chicago homicides reduced to 300 scarcely a week into his tenure and at the end of his career only set himself up for failure and ridicule.
To lower homicides, Superintendent Moon Shot needs to come down to earth.
