Don't Buy Mayor Candidate Kam Buckner's Magical Thinking On Violence

CHICAGO — In the wake of the bloodiest Memorial Weekend in five years, state Rep. Kam Buckner tried to draw attention to his mayoral campaign by announcing what violence prevention would look like in the unlikely event that he gets elected in February.

Buckner's campaign stunt came after a four-day stretch when 51 people were shot-and-wounded, nine fatally, in a city with a shooting problem that he currently represents.

It's nothing short of magical thinking.

He'd hire more cops at a time when police departments across the country, Chicago included, are struggling to recruit and retain officers.

Buckner said as mayor he'd double violence prevention funding, which is funny since the state representative said nothing when Gov. J.B. Pritzker's administration didn't cut checks for the "immediate" anti-violence funding this year as promised.

If Buckner were elected mayor— which would have to happen while he was still serving a conditional discharge of a 30-day sentence jail sentence (minus two-days time served) for driving under the influence — he would create a new city job to fight violence: "Youth Engagement Superintendent." That might be my favorite nonsense anti-violence strategy of all time.

Buckner als0 said he would create an "Internet Intelligence Unit" to monitor crimes planned online, a job that's already being done by Chicago police and the FBI, minus a moniker that mimics a Dick Wolf cop soap opera on NBC.

Go ahead, take a look at the mayoral candidate's "Safety and Justice" plan.

Maybe you'll notice, like I did, nearly half of the 11 pages consists of blank space and pictures.

The rest reads like cheap ideas void of details, some that could fit on cocktail napkins.

Like this one: "Providing the Chicago Police Department with better technology, better benefits, and better support staff will give CPD the resources they need to best serve our communities."

Another part of Buckner's anti-violence "plan" aims to make policing more political.

If he were mayor, police district boundaries would be redrawn like congressional maps to "reflect neighborhood changes and crime patterns, strategically positioning our law enforcement officers to work in the current landscape."

Buckner's opportunistic politicking and bad ideas makes it tough to decide what is more offensive:

Is it his attempt to gain political points in the wake of a particularly bloody weekend body count when the mayoral election is nine months away?

Or his uniformed, repackaging of the same ol' anti-violence "strategies" that he suggests would magically make Chicago safer, including his call for "authentic" community policing?

That proposal, for instance, is apparently based on something his father, a former cop, used to say: "The worst thing to happen to police departments was the motorized squad car."

We know Buckner mentions his father's status as a veteran cop when he wants to be convincing.

Like the time in March 2019, when he was caught on police body camera video talking to a Springfield officer who found him drunk and asleep behind the wheel of his car.

The millennial lawmaker made what looked to me like sympathy plays — announcing his position as a "state rep" and being the son of a veteran cop being treated for cancer — in search of special treatment from the interrogating officer.

Buckner's mayoral campaign seems to be following a similar playbook to advance his political ambition.

The Springfield police officer didn't buy it.

Chicago voters shouldn't either.

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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