CHICAGO — For the second time this week, a shooting victim was found outdoors in the West Side ward represented by Ald. Monique Scott (24th). And, like the first victim, nobody called 911 to report the gunfire that injured her. Instead, she received help from a passerby who found her near the basketball courts at Park 500.

Like the vast majority of her City Council colleagues, Scott urged Mayor Brandon Johnson to keep the ShotSpotter gunfire detection system active as the company’s contract neared expiration last September. Despite the opposition from Scott, 32 other aldermen, his police superintendent, and, according to a poll, over 70% of city residents, Johnson decided to terminate the system.

The basketball courts at Park 500 and the surrounding neighborhood were monitored by ShotSpotter until he did that.

Police received a 911 call about a person shot in the head in the 3800 block of West Polk around 9:23 p.m. Thursday. They found the 28-year-old victim, who was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in fair condition. An officer said they also found a bullet fragment near the intersection of Springfield and Lexington, up the street from the park.

The woman told police she was on the sidewalk when she heard gunfire and felt pain, according to a CPD media statement.

Over the weekend, 13-year-old Amari Williams didn’t return home as expected on Sunday evening. His mom reported him missing. CPD officers found Amari’s body in the backyard of a home in the 1500 block of South Kildare around 2:10 a.m. He had been shot, probably sometime between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. the night before.

Had the nearby ShotSpotters still been active, police would have been notified of the gunfire that killed him and the location where the shots were fired. But the ShotSpotters weren’t active, and Amari lay shot and undiscovered for hours.

“If we had ShotSpotter or some kind of tool, we could’ve known where to find this kid, and he was just left in a backyard for we don’t know how long,” Scott told CBS2.

If we had ShotSpotter… Yeah.

Brandon’s Bodies

As of 12:01 a.m. on September 23, 2024, Chicago terminated its relationship with ShotSpotter, a gunfire detection system deployed in 12 of the city’s most violence-impacted neighborhoods. Mayor Brandon Johnson stubbornly refused to reconsider his decision to dismantle ShotSpotter, even though the vast majority of aldermen, many citizens, victim advocates, and his handpicked police superintendent requested that it remain in place.

This reporting series, named “Brandon’s Bodies,” seeks to document cases of shooting victims and police investigations that could have benefited from gunshot detection technology.

The general criteria for inclusion are a gunshot victim found outside in a location previously served by ShotSpotter with either (1) no accompanying 911 calls about gunfire or (2) calls about gunfire in a general area that did not lead to the timely location of the victim.