The killing of Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman continued to draw national political attention this week, with House Speaker Mike Johnson telling an NRCC event that the system did not fail Gorman but rather produced exactly the outcome that Democratic open borders and sanctuary city policies were designed to produce. The suspect had been in law enforcement custody twice before the shooting, the Speaker noted, and two opportunities to remove him from the streets were passed over.
Former Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to offer his assessment of where Chicago’s public safety situation stands and what he believes needs to change.
Johnson opened with a point he said he wants stated plainly: the preponderance of Chicago’s crime problem is domestic in origin, not immigration-driven, and anyone who suggests otherwise is not being straight with the public. That said, he argued that the city’s posture toward ICE is indefensible on its own terms regardless of the scale of the immigration enforcement question. His position is straightforward: crossing the border illegally is a federal crime, and when law enforcement encounters someone in the country illegally, creating a clear pathway for federal agents to take custody is simply common sense. It avoids the far more difficult and chaotic scenario of forcing ICE into neighborhoods to pursue people who could have been handed over quietly from a jail or courthouse.
Johnson acknowledged that he has reservations about some of the tactics ICE agents have employed under the current administration, saying that some of what he has observed suggests agents are operating more on emotion than on proper training. But he drew a sharp distinction between having tactical concerns and actively impeding federal law enforcement, calling the latter, in his words, ridiculous. He said that during his tenure as superintendent, even while Chicago’s sanctuary ordinances were in effect, he made clear to his department that federal agents are citizens of the city too, and that CPD would not stand down if any federal officer called for assistance. The risk of someone getting hurt on either side, he said, is too serious for that kind of political posturing.
Proft raised the revelation from Alderman Ray Lopez that ICE currently has a list of roughly two thousand high-priority targets in Chicago, individuals the Biden administration identified and poorly vetted before releasing them into the country and who are now known to pose public safety risks. Johnson said the larger dynamic that list represents is familiar to him, echoing arguments he made years ago as superintendent that a relatively small number of habitual violent offenders drive a disproportionate share of Chicago’s most serious crime, and that removing them from the streets would produce a meaningful and immediate reduction in violence. The obstacle then, as now, is a criminal justice system that does not impose consequences with the certainty that actually deters behavior. Johnson was direct on this point: criminals do not go out to DuPage or Lake County to commit crimes because they know accountability is real there, while in Cook County they have learned through repeated experience that it frequently is not.
On the question of the SAFE-T Act, Johnson said that if it cannot be repealed outright it needs to be substantially reworked, describing his frustration as a thirty-one-year law enforcement veteran at a legal framework in which the perpetrators of crimes appear to have more enforceable rights than the victims. He said the pendulum has swung too far left and needs to come back toward the center if the goal is actually holding people accountable rather than processing them through a revolving door.
Proft also pressed Johnson on the violence interrupters program, which remains a component of the city’s updated CTA security plan despite persistent questions about its effectiveness. Johnson was blunt, saying the claims made on behalf of violence interrupters make him laugh, and that there is no reliable way to quantify what the programs actually produce. He allowed that there may be isolated instances where they provide some benefit, but said that if the goal is a tangible, measurable reduction in crime in the near term, the answer is hiring more trained police officers, deploying them into communities, and building the kind of relationships with residents that produce actionable intelligence and genuine deterrence. Violence interruption and similar social programs are at best long-term investments, he said, and should not be confused with the short-term tools that actually move crime statistics.
Johnson closed by addressing Governor Pritzker’s publicly stated Project 2029 agenda, which includes plans to criminally and civilly prosecute Trump administration officials and federal agents for actions taken during the current term. Johnson did not engage the governor’s plans directly but reiterated his core argument: law enforcement activities should not be a political football, and placing Chicago police officers or federal agents in the middle of political disputes between elected officials serves no one, least of all the residents those officials claim to be protecting.