Passerby finds gunshot victim lying alone in the street (Too bad the mayor unplugged ShotSpotter)

CHICAGO — Passersby found a 54-year-old man lying in the middle of 49th Street overnight, suffering from three gunshot wounds to his chest, Chicago police said. Nobody called 911 to report gunfire in the area.

The man was found on a block that was monitored by the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection network until Mayor Brandon Johnson ended the company’s contract in September. Had the system been operational this morning, it could have alerted police and EMS to the shooting so the victim didn’t have to lie around waiting for someone to find him.

According to CPD, officers responded to a call of a person down in the 1300 block of West 49th Street around 3:55 a.m. They found a 54-year-old man lying next to his car, which was riddled with bullet holes.

The victim told the police that someone fired shots at him from a vehicle that pulled up next to him and sped away. Police said the victim is in serious condition at Stroger Hospital.

Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) represents the block where this morning’s victim was found. She questioned ShotSpotter’s effectiveness when the system came up for a contract renewal last April.

“I live in a ward which has benefited, but also ShotSpotter has been problematic. If anybody knows where my office is, it’s right off the expressway, and I can count the number of times on my hands and feet that the police have showed up and it’s been the backfire from the expressway,” Taylor said, according to Block Club Chicago. “And so if we’re going to spend money on something, let it be something that actually works, or something that we can collect clear data on.”

Later in the year, when the City Council voted on a measure that would give CPD Supt. Larry Snelling the authority to enter into a new contract with ShotSpotter without Johnson’s involvement, Taylor didn’t show up to vote. But, she told reporters that she would have voted to give Snelling the power if she had shown up. Hers would have been the 34th vote in favor of the measure, exactly enough to override a Johnson veto. Instead, it passed with only 33 votes.

Within days of ShotSpotter being disconnected on September 23, CWBChicago launched “Brandon’s Bodies,” a series of reports that tracks shooting victims who could have benefited from the gunfire detection system.

Taylor, responding to the third installment in the series, was outraged: “We have nothing. How do we have a woman who was there for nine hours, and nobody came? There has to be something in place, and they have had plenty of time to do it.”

As of this morning, the Johnson administration has not deployed any technologies to replace ShotSpotter. The mayor stubbornly refuses to turn the system back on while he tries to find one.