It’s official: Chicago remains the nation’s homicide capital for the 13th straight year, racking up a staggering 573 homicides in 2024 alone. That’s more than New York and Los Angeles combined—and yet, according to 41st Ward Alderman Anthony Napolitano, city officials are still intent on slashing the police budget.
Let that sink in.
Napolitano didn’t mince words in an interview with Fox News Digital. “They’re ignoring the crime rate,” he said, accusing Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration of prioritizing progressive pet projects over public safety. “Their goal is to steal the police budget.”
And it shows. Despite the city’s violent crime epidemic—one that sees residents in safer wards waiting hours for police to respond to burglaries because officers have been redirected elsewhere—leadership continues to double down on policies that have, by many accounts, backfired. Chief among them is the $250 million INVEST South/West initiative, a program meant to revitalize neighborhoods in the city’s southwest region. Napolitano called it an “epic fail.”
His argument is straightforward: instead of making part of the city attractive to investors, why not make the entire city safe so that businesses aren’t afraid to set up shop in Chicago at all? But safety isn’t the focus—politics is.
At the same time, Johnson is doubling down on Chicago’s sanctuary city status, rebuffing warnings from federal officials. In a recent podcast interview, the mayor defended his refusal to let local police cooperate with ICE on deportation raids, describing the stance as morally righteous and necessary to maintain trust between immigrants and law enforcement. “We’re just not going to have our local law enforcement behave as ICE agents,” he said.
Yet back in Washington, immigration enforcement officials like former ICE Director Tom Homan are signaling a very different tone. Homan has warned that if local officials actively block ICE operations, they could face prosecution. The Johnson administration has already released internal guidance to city departments on what to do if ICE shows up—essentially advising staff to stall, call legal counsel, and not let federal agents proceed without a valid warrant.
But Napolitano believes the sanctuary city approach is a costly gamble, one that’s already hurting taxpayers and endangering public safety. “The federal government didn’t give us anything when [Democrats] were in office,” he said, arguing that Chicago bet on a different outcome in the 2024 election and lost. Now, with no support coming in and migrant-related costs skyrocketing, the city is hemorrhaging resources.
As it stands, Chicago’s leadership continues to pour money into programs that aren’t yielding measurable results—at the expense of basic public safety. Crime remains sky-high. Police departments are understaffed. Residents in relatively safe areas are left without protection, while the political class points fingers at Washington and presses on with policies that prioritize ideology over impact.