When Brandon Johnson was elected as the new Mayor of Chicago earlier this year, he promised that things were going to be different. And everyone there who managed to survive Lori Lightfoot’s tenure as Mayor certainly hoped that was true. But specifically, how would it be different? He’s had some time to find his way around and begin putting his own policies in place, but taking a quick glance at recent headlines, things really don’t seem to have changed all that much. Looking closer, however, perhaps things are at least a tad bit different. If anything… they’re worse. Pretty much every night after the sun goes down, people show up across the city and start committing crimes. These aren’t protests of any sort. Nobody is waving banners or yelling about how Black Lives Matter. They’re just criminals taking to the streets in large numbers. CBS News in Chicago is scrambling to cover all of the action that unfolded on Sunday night. In one series of events, multiple people were robbed in a matter of minutes, likely by the same group of armed suspects.

Another string of armed robberies were reported overnight, including two in the city’s West Side.

Chicago police said a 28-year-old woman was robbed at gunpoint near Adams and Halsted just before 1 a.m. Minutes later, a 24-year-old man was robbed near Western and Monroe.

In both robberies, the victims were walking on the sidewalk and targeted by a group of people in a white sedan.

The final sentence of the article is all too common these days: “No arrests have been made.” Of course there weren’t any arrests made. There is far too much crime for Chicago’s remaining cops to keep under control and the gangs know it.

Not everyone was being robbed, of course. Some people were just being gunned down, including two who were apparently asking for trouble by riding scooters on the public sidewalk.

Two people were shot while riding scooters on Chicago’s Southwest Side Sunday night.

Just before 10:45 p.m., police said the victims, ages 21 and 19, were riding motorized scooters in the 3600 block of South Archer Avenue when shots were fired from a white SUV.

Yet again, the police find it likely that these attacks were committed by the same people riding around in a white SUV.  A 21-year-old man was shot in the chest and is in the hospital in critical condition. A 19-year-old girl was shot in the face but is expected to survive. Were they simply shot at random or did they have some connection to the shooters? We don’t have any clue. Nobody is talking. And even though a vehicle was involved and there seem to be security cameras everywhere these days, the police don’t seem to be able to identify the shooters or the vehicle. How does that work?

Check out this brief video report from the local ABC News outlet. Over the course of just this weekend, 37 people were shot and five of them were killed. In one weekend.

Chicago was already bad before Brandon Johnson took office. But at this point, it is apparently not possible for an innocent person to go out after dark and even walk on the sidewalk or ride a scooter. How is this possible in a major city in the United States? To their credit, the Chicago Sun-Times has been keeping a running tally of the names of every person who has been killed this year in the Windy City. Or at least they are listing the names of the people who could be identified. Some of the more recent ones are only listed as “unknown male” or “unknown female,” making them another faceless statistic among the fallen.

Have the residents of Chicago simply come to see this as “the new normal?” Are they simply accepting it because they don’t see a way to change it? Crime has long been an issue in Chicago, it’s true. But not like this. People deserve far, far better. And those who ask for the jobs of running the city and who have a responsibility to create a safe environment for the law-abiding (or at least “safer”) must be held accountable. All of this is fixable if the will exists to fix it. And it’s long past time. These people don’t deserve to live in a war zone. And the vast majority of the victims are minorities living on the South and West sides. Where are the Democrats who care so much about all of those lives of Black and brown people who matter to them?