Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson Describes Evolution of Violence

Video Transcript

You know, when I started as a police officer in 1988, we responded to hundreds of gang fights in progress calls on a daily basis. Now we very rarely hear that call anymore. What we hear now is a person with a gun or a person shot. You know, so now there’s no mano-a-mano thing; they just go straight to a firearm and they resolve their disputes with a weapon.

A lot of our gun violence now is precipitated by social media. You know, social media drives a lot of our violence. So they’ll get on social media and disrespect each other, and a lot of times give each others’ locations. And when they do that, that rival will go to that location, and gunplay will be the result of it.