Call In National Guard? Pandering Pritzker Plays Trump-Like Card

CHICAGO — All this talk about sending the National Guard to Chicago as a strategy to curb violence is a steaming pile of phony political rhetoric.

That's what we've come to expect from Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Illinois' billionaire panderer-in-chief.

Chicago's rampant violent crime has been trouble for Pritzker since his re-election narrative got hijacked by fellow billionaire Ken Griffin, who called out the governor for being more concerned about bowing to public-employee unions on just about everything than responding to the city's shooting problem.

Last week, the governor attempted to distance his campaign from the city's violence problem by suggesting a willingness to order Illinois guardsmen to fire up the tanks and roll into Chicago if Mayor Lori Lightfoot would take him up on the generous offer of a military occupation in our town.

That's a request Lightfoot is never going to make. There is no evidence that marching soldiers trained to carry fully automatic weapons — and aren't legally allowed to make arrests — into residential neighborhoods and business districts is an effective violent crime reduction strategy.

The National Guard does a great job filling sandbags when rivers flood, handing out snacks to stranded drivers during city crippling blizzards, making well-being checks when tornadoes touch down, getting vaccine jabs in arms and, as we learned during last summer's civil unrest, checking IDs and barricading expressway exits.

But stopping street violence? Not so much, says almost everybody who has considered the consequences. We have been here before. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley turned down then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich's offer to send in the National Guard. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel ignored a similar offer from then-Gov. Pat Quinn.

In 2016, when 762 people were murdered in Chicago, former Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, determined that after analyzing the consequences of a National Guard deployment, "no thoughtful leader thinks that's a good idea or would really provide a solution."

And now, Pritzker is saying that calling in the National Guard — ironically the sort of proposal suggested by former President Donald Trump — is OK with him.

When you listen to Pritzker talk about his willingness to send in troops, it's clear his words have been crafted by politicos concerned about winning elections rather than a thoughtful leader genuinely concerned with finding solutions to the increase in shootings and carjackings citywide that also pop up in his posh Gold Coast neighborhood — such as the Sept. 9 carjacking outside his Astor Street mansion.

"Obviously, we’ll help in any way we possibly can,” Pritzker said last week.

If that were true, Pritzker would order up an influx of state cash to respond to invest in poor, neglected Chicago neighborhoods where street violence is a public health crisis.

But so far, Pritzker's idea of help has been to pinch off $3.5 million in legal weed tax revenue for 21 groups that offer "prosocial activities" and street violence intervention.

And the governor's state budget included $788,500 for violence prevention in Chicago neighborhoods — a smidgen more than the $743,000 that the governor earmarked to fix up the Quincy Regional Barge Dock and $765,000 for a new visitor center at the Naper Settlement Museum in Naperville.

Meanwhile, Pritzker has been making stops around the state bearing gifts of taxpayer cash while his political operation blasts $7 million worth of early campaign ads pimping his re-election bid.

The governor, for example, showed up in Chicago last week to announce he's putting the "pedal to the metal" by investing $15 million in bio-science labs — but only about 10 percent of that money is earmarked for investments in the city.

Pritzker even recently boasted of plans to dole out $50 million to improve the quality of life and stimulate economic activity in downtown districts in areas hit hardest during COVID-19 — outside of Chicago, where his campaign's interests lie.

Summoning the National Guard to Chicago for four months would cost $54 million in taxpayer cash — and do nothing to quell the violence here.

If the governor was serious about helping Chicago fight its bloody public health crisis, he'd be willing to invest in solutions that don't involve the military occupation of America's "best big city."

But he's not — at least when there are laboratories, barge docks and museum gift shops for taxpayers to spend public money on before suburban and downstate voters go to the polls.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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