The policing pipeline problem needs more work

You can't reform or improve policing unless more people want to be cops

In the closing days of the recent Chicago mayoral campaign, the head of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police said of Brandon Johnson, “if this guy gets in we’re going to see an exodus like we’ve never seen before” and that this would lead to “blood in the streets.”

If these tone-deaf comments were designed to get people to vote for Paul Vallas, they were badly miscalculated, with Vallas feeling the need to disavow them immediately. They were also a symptom of the Vallas camp’s tendency to play too much to a national audience rather than focusing on the median Chicago voter, who is a pretty banal Democrat. The Johnson camp offered a much better closing argument, refraining from painting the election as a factional intra-Democratic struggle and instead characterizing Vallas as a crypto-Republican. And while Johnson brought in national leftist figures like Bernie Sanders, his personal message pivoted to the center in an effort to reassure older African American voters that he takes their …