Man found shot in Hermosa alley after no one reports gunfire in former ShotSpotter zone

A man was shot Saturday night in an alley in the Hermosa neighborhood, and it’s unclear how long he lay there before anyone found him, because no one called 911 to report gunfire, he did not cooperate with police, and the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system that once covered the area was shut down by Mayor Brandon Johnson in September 2024.

At about 9:07 p.m., a 911 caller reported that someone had run up to them demanding they call an ambulance, saying a person had been beaten and was bleeding in an alley behind the 1900 block of North Kilbourne Avenue, according to CPD dispatch audio.

Police and fire personnel searched the area and found the man about ten minutes later. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound to his right knee, CPD said, adding that he did not cooperate with their investigation.

Officers recovered one shell casing at the scene, suggesting the shooting happened where the man was ultimately found. That detail underscores what ShotSpotter supporters have long argued: the system could have alerted police to the gunfire the moment it happened and helped pinpoint the man’s location, even though no one called 911 to report shots fired.

Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) represents the area where the man was shot. She was among the minority of City Council members who backed Johnson’s decision to disconnect ShotSpotter, and her public comments defending that position at times seemed to undercut her own argument.

“I just had a four-year-old boy shot on North Avenue,” Fuentes said in 2024. “ShotSpotter detected the sound. It didn’t prevent that young boy from being shot.”

No technology can stop someone from pulling a trigger. ShotSpotter was designed to speed up emergency response for victims like the four-year-old Fuentes described, and for the hundreds of other people shot in Chicago each year.

Fuentes has also argued there’s no evidence ShotSpotter made communities safer, saying “the safest communities in our city don’t have ShotSpotter.”

Her statement is true, but her logic is twisted. City officials installed ShotSpotter in areas where the most shootings happened rather than wasting money on installing sensors in areas where few shootings occurred. Fuentes made it sound like Lincoln Park was a safe neighborhood because it didn’t have ShotSpotter when, in fact, Lincoln Park didn’t have ShotSpotter because it was a safe neighborhood.

About 67% of aldermen wanted to keep ShotSpotter, including most representing the city’s most violence-plagued wards, according to City Council voting records. Much of the opposition came from aldermen whose wards never had the system installed in the first place.

Since Johnson ended the city’s contract with ShotSpotter following the 2024 Democratic National Convention, CWBChicago has identified 89 cases in which gunshot victims appeared to endure lengthy waits for emergency help in areas the system used to monitor, either because no one called 911 to report the gunfire or because callers gave information too vague for officers to quickly locate victims.

Those delays may be costing lives. About 21% of people shot in Chicago this year have died from their injuries, according to data maintained by HeyJackass.com. Among the victims in the delayed-response cases identified by CWBChicago, the fatality rate is nearly three times higher, at 60%.

When ShotSpotter was being dismantled, Johnson promised his administration would find a better gunfire detection system to protect every Chicago neighborhood. Nearly two years later, the city has received proposals from multiple companies, but no replacement has been announced.

About this series

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, victims’ 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 do not lead to the timely location of the victim.