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  • How City Hall handcuffs Chicago PD

    How City Hall handcuffs Chicago PD
    2026/07/20
    Larry Snelling is stepping down after nearly three years as Chicago Police Superintendent. In this episode of A Four Star Podcast with Grant Horne, former top cop Garry McCarthy looks back at Snelling’s tenure, what he got right, where he may have been constrained, and what his departure says about the relationship between CPD and City Hall. McCarthy argues that the DNC response may be Snelling’s clearest success. He compares it with the crowd-control strategy used during the 2012 NATO Summit and explains why visible, front-line leadership matters. But there are also tougher questions. Was Snelling increasingly boxed in by Mayor Brandon Johnson and City Hall? Why did he become less visible in the final months of his tenure? And were the mayor and superintendent ever truly on the same page about crime, policing, and public safety? The conversation also covers Snelling’s South Side roots, his long career inside CPD, the debate over car stops and the federal consent decree, and the strengths and limits of promoting a department insider. Finally, McCarthy explains how Chicago chooses its next superintendent and what the city should be looking for: leadership, street experience, political independence, community trust, and a clear plan for reducing crime. Wearing the Badge - Jason Moran EP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYie9mI2JhE 00:00 Snelling, Johnson and Competing Visions 00:52 Why Running CPD Is So Difficult 01:42 When Chicago Abandoned Data-Driven Policing 05:14 Assessing Larry Snelling’s Tenure 07:07 Crime Statistics Versus Fear of Crime 09:17 Was City Hall Silencing Snelling? 11:18 How Superintendents Maintain Independence 13:41 Snelling’s Biggest Success: The DNC 16:27 Leading CPD From the Front 18:47 Lessons From Riots and 9/11 22:22 What Else Did Snelling Accomplish? 23:47 Snelling’s South Side Connection 30:04 The Advantages of a CPD Lifer 33:22 Snelling, Car Stops and the Consent Decree 38:56 How Chicago Selects a Superintendent 43:18 What Comes Next for Larry Snelling? 45:13 What CPD Needs in Its Next Leader 47:57 When Politics Removes Police Technology 52:30 Solving Cold Cases and Identifying Victims A Four Star Podcast is new every Tuesday morning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    57 分
  • Is the Chicago Housing Market Finally Cooling Off

    Is the Chicago Housing Market Finally Cooling Off
    2026/07/14
    Is the Chicago housing market finally cooling off, or is it just taking a summer break? And how will the city's controversial new Protecting Renters Ordinance actually impact the tenants it claims to help? Whether you're navigating 6-7% interest rates, wondering if a 100-year-old historic bungalow is a massive money pit, or trying to understand complex local tenant laws, the Windy City's real estate landscape is shifting fast. In this episode of A Four Star Podcast, Grant Horne sits down with Philip Schwartz, a veteran real estate broker with @properties and active local housing provider, to unpack the realities facing Chicago buyers, sellers, and renters today. We kick off with a hyper-local market update, breaking down why life milestones—not just fluctuating rates—are driving transaction volumes across Chicago's most competitive neighborhoods. Then, we dissect the Johnson administration's proposed Protecting Renters Ordinance. Philip reveals how strict new application fee caps, "just cause" eviction clauses, and rent control debates could unintentionally backfire, squeezing mom-and-pop landlords and reducing housing quality for the very renters the policy aims to protect. Finally, we dive into a practical masterclass on Chicago's iconic architectural staples. Learn why 100-year-old bungalows and multi-flats face severe basement flooding risks, how to manage drastic second-floor temperature swings, and why you should never ignore a home inspection report. Mentioned Links & Resources: Find Philip Schwartz on @properties: https://www.atproperties.com Chicago Realty Pro Landing Page: https://www.chicagorealtypro.com Side Street Bar Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7YM2wQQ3-Q Chapters 0:00 Market Snapshot & Pricing Trends 1:25 Hyper-Local Chicago Real Estate 3:08 The Summer Listing Myth Debunked 5:46 Navigating 6-7% Interest Rates 8:31 Budgeting vs. Purchasing Power 11:09 Chicago's Hottest Neighborhoods 12:44 The Protecting Renters Ordinance 18:19 Business Impact on Landlords 22:44 The Truth About Application Fees 29:12 The Just Cause Eviction Dilemma 32:00 The Rent Control Debate 45:30 Chicago Bungalow Maintenance 50:52 Fixing Temperature Disparities 51:38 Upgrading Old Electrical Systems 54:31 Multi-Flats vs. Worker Cottages 1:01:32 Chicago's Basement Pub Culture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 時間 4 分
  • The Cannabis Business Is Brutal

    The Cannabis Business Is Brutal
    2026/07/07
    Illinois’ $1.5 billion regulated cannabis market is easy to misunderstand. From the outside, it can look like a simple retail story. But behind the counter is a much bigger conversation about business, policy, taxes, compliance, social equity, and the future of a still-evolving industry. Tiffany Ingram, Executive Director of the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois, joins us to explain how Illinois built one of the country’s most ambitious regulated markets and why running these businesses is far more challenging than many people realize. Illinois was the first state to legalize and launch a fully regulated commercial adult-use cannabis market through the legislature. That gave lawmakers the chance to build a system with specific goals around social equity, community reinvestment, licensing, expungement, and addressing some of the damage caused by decades of enforcement policy. But that history also shaped everything that followed: limited licenses, heavy oversight, multiple regulatory agencies, high taxes, special lending programs, and one of the most closely watched business environments in the state. In this episode, Tiffany explains why she calls Illinois operators “super entrepreneurs,” how compliance costs can make or break independent businesses, why taxes remain one of the industry’s biggest pressure points, and how recent legislation could provide some relief. We also get into the fight over intoxicating hemp products, federal rescheduling, medical access, social equity promises, and what the next version of Illinois’ regulated market might look like. https://www.cbail.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/cannabizil/ https://x.com/CannabizIL 00:00 No Safety Net 00:35 Tiffany Ingram Joins the Show 00:50 From the Novel to the Mundane 03:45 Why Illinois Built It Differently 08:29 Social Equity by Design 14:23 Did Illinois Keep Its Promise? 19:22 Super Entrepreneurs, Thin Margins 29:44 Taxes, Security, and Relief 39:03 The Hemp Loophole Fight 49:44 Federal Rescheduling and the Future 55:58 The Next Frontier for Access Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 時間 1 分
  • A glow up for the Chicago Transit Authority

    A glow up for the Chicago Transit Authority
    2026/06/30
    Better transit. Safer streets. Smarter Chicago. This is A Four Star Podcast. In the premiere edition of A Four Star Podcast, we dive into the nuts and bolts of urban survival in a city that often feels like it's working against its residents. Our thesis is simple: identifying the specific civic gears that are stuck and finding the practical, sometimes "guerrilla" solutions to grease them. We start with John Greenfield (Streetsblog Chicago) to discuss the "El Hygiene" crisis. From the "Halloween Miracle" that saved transit funding to the tactical urbanism of using hot dog cartoons to stop smokers on the Blue Line, we explore how to restore the CTA to its status as a world-class utility. Next, realtor Philip Schwartz pulls back the curtain on a bizarre spring real estate market that is punishing buyers. We analyze the BUILD Act and the legislative friction surrounding ADUs, alongside a warning for bungalow owners: your traditionally "dry" neighborhood is changing, and it might cost you $20,000 to stay above water. Finally, former CPD Superintendent Garry McCarthy joins us for a heated look at Senate Bill 3564. As Springfield looks to restrict facial recognition technology, McCarthy argues that we are legislating away the very tools that solve modern murders, leading to a "hand-shy" police force and a decline in public safety. Chapters 00:00 Cold Open 01:24 The CTA: The Quality of Life Value 05:28 Chicago Transit's Halloween Miracle 08:53 Be More Like Paris 10:38 Poodle Noodles & Politics 15:28 El Hygiene 101 17:58 The D.C. Blueprint 24:03 Guerrilla Urbanism to Stop Train Smoking 34:33 Road Diets 40:13 The Waymo Pace Car 50:28 Digging into the BUILD Act 56:53 The One-Stairwell Debate 01:03:38 Big Prices: Resetting the Market 01:10:08 How Sellers Put Pressure on Buyers 01:18:23 The Wealth Gap 01:30:38 Chicago's Basement Flooding Realities 01:34:13 Why Cops Need Facial Recognition Tech 01:39:53 Legislators Getting in the Way of Safety 01:47:38 The Ferguson Effect in Chicago 01:54:33 Final Watch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 時間 56 分
  • Build More, Fight Less

    Build More, Fight Less
    2026/06/30
    Why is it so hard to build housing in Chicago? David Lapidus, a member of the pro-housing Chicago Growth Project, joins A Four Star Podcast for a practical, ground-level conversation about the rules, politics and economics that shape what gets built, what doesn’t and why Chicago’s housing debate is no longer just a niche urbanist argument. David is also a member of the pro-housing Abundant Housing Illinois and Strong Towns Chicago organizations, but in this conversation only represents his personal views and not the views of these two organizations or Chicago Growth Project. At the center of the conversation is the fight between YIMBYism and NIMBYism. YIMBY means “Yes In My Backyard,” a pro-housing view that argues cities need more homes, more density and fewer artificial barriers to building. NIMBY means “Not In My Backyard,” the familiar neighborhood resistance to new development, especially when it means more units, taller buildings, less parking or visible change on a block. Lapidus has spent 15 years developing multifamily housing in Chicago, which means this conversation is not theoretical. We get into what makes projects pencil out, why rehab work has become harder, how labor shortages affect quality and cost, and why new construction can sometimes make more sense than fixing what is already there. From there, the conversation turns to Chicago’s unique political bottleneck: aldermanic prerogative. David explains how one alder can effectively stop a zoning change in one ward, why neighborhood opposition carries so much influence, and how Chicago often functions like "50 different cities within one city" instead of one coherent housing market. We also dig into the Affordable Requirements Ordinance, public versus private development, prevailing wage rules, soft costs, environmental requirements, elevator mandates, building codes, fire safety, and the uncomfortable question underneath all of it: when do good intentions become rules that stop homes from being built? The conversation eventually widens into politics. David argues housing is no longer a traditionally left-versus-right issue. It cuts across Democrats, Republicans, developers, renters, environmentalists and neighborhood activists alike. The real divide, he says, is between those who believe we can grow the pie and those who believe everyone is fighting over the same limited pieces. New episodes of A Four Star Podcast drop Tuesday mornings at 6AM. https://abundanthousingillinois.org/ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/keep-families-in-the-city-building-neighborhoods-for-lifelong-chicagoans-tickets-1992152874876 https://chicagogrowthproject.org/ https://www.strongtownschicago.org/ 00:00 Cold open 00:40 Meet David Lapidus 01:58 What stops Chicago from building 08:11 The rehab problem 11:13 How much density makes sense? 16:16 The aldermanic veto 24:19 Why alders are hard to move 33:14 Is YIMBY gaining ground? 41:08 Private, public, or both? 45:40 Affordable housing math 55:36 When rules beat results 01:00:19 Codes, stairs and dead projects 01:10:26 Build more, fight less 01:14:26 Can housing change politics? 01:28:57 Where to plug in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 時間 38 分
  • The danger of being a Chicago cyclist

    The danger of being a Chicago cyclist
    2026/06/23
    Riley O’Neil’s death hit Chicago’s safe-streets community especially hard. He was not just a cyclist. He was a CDOT planner who worked on making streets safer before he was killed while biking in Bridgeport. In this episode of A Four Star Podcast, Grant Horne talks with John Greenfield of Streetsblog Chicago about Riley’s life, his work, and what his death says about the way Chicago designs, debates, and prioritizes its streets. But Riley’s story is only the beginning. The conversation widens into a bigger look at Chicago transportation: the limits of paint-only bike lanes, the politics of protected infrastructure, the fight over parking and curb space, new express bus lane proposals, e-bike legislation, and what the CTA needs from its new leadership. Greenfield also shares his impressions from visiting the Obama Presidential Center site as the city prepares for its opening, and what that major South Side destination could mean for transit, biking, walking, tourism, and neighborhood access. It is a conversation about bikes, buses, trains, traffic, and development. More than that, it is about whether Chicago can build a transportation system that is safer, faster, more reliable, and more humane. From Riley’s legacy to the future of the CTA, this episode asks a simple question with complicated answers: how should Chicago move? https://x.com/streetsblogchi https://bsky.app/profile/chi.streetsblog.org https://chi.streetsblog.org/ 00:00 Coming up: Riley and Chicago’s streets 00:25 John Greenfield joins the show 02:30 Riley O’Neil’s story 07:30 A safe-streets planner killed biking 12:30 Dooring, bike lanes, and street design 18:30 Paint versus protection 24:30 Memorial rides and policy pressure 30:00 The broader transportation fight 34:00 Express bus lanes 40:00 Chicago’s e-bike debate 46:00 A new leader for CTA 53:00 What riders need now 59:00 Visiting the Obama Center 1:06:00 Transit, access, and the South Side 1:12:00 How Chicago should move Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 時間 6 分
  • Raise Hell, Then Leave: The Lightfoot Legacy

    Raise Hell, Then Leave: The Lightfoot Legacy
    2026/06/16
    Lori Lightfoot stormed into City Hall with a historic mandate, a reformer’s promise, and a landslide victory that seemed to signal a new era in Chicago politics. Four years later, she became the first Chicago mayor in decades to lose reelection. In this special vacation-week episode of A Four Star Podcast, Grant is on break, so we’re sharing his April 2024 interview with Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Royal Pratt, author of The City Is Up for Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led and Lost a City in Crisis. The conversation originally aired as part of the Fox 32 feature Raise Hell, Then Leave: The Lightfoot Legacy. Pratt walks through Lightfoot’s rise, her reformer image, her fractured relationships inside City Hall, her complicated approach to policing, her COVID-era leadership, and the political instincts that made her both unforgettable and isolated. It’s a look back at one of the strangest, sharpest, most consequential mayoral terms in modern Chicago history, and what Lightfoot’s legacy looks like now as Brandon Johnson faces his own political headwinds. 00:00 Raise Hell, Then Leave 01:08 Greg Royal Pratt on Lightfoot 01:33 The Mini Mayor 02:41 Lori the Reformer 05:38 The Landslide 07:48 The Fighter in City Hall 10:01 Lightfoot, Police, and Trust 14:38 Police Reform’s Missed Opportunity 16:34 Lightfoot and COVID 19:02 A Leader Alone 20:32 Covering Lori Lightfoot 22:36 Is There a Legacy? 24:27 Brandon Johnson and Lightfoot’s View Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    27 分
  • Chicago killed ShotSpotter. The argument still lives.

    Chicago killed ShotSpotter. The argument still lives.
    2026/06/09
    Chicago ended ShotSpotter. Then came the studies, the headlines, the political victory laps, and a much bigger question: What did the data actually prove? On this episode of FOX Chicago's A Four Star Podcast, Grant Horne is joined by Richard Day, journalist with A City That Works, for a deeper look at Chicago’s ongoing fight over gunshot detection technology, police response times, public safety data, and the way city leaders and media outlets interpret numbers when the politics are already loaded. The conversation centers on a recent report that some used to argue Mayor Brandon Johnson was right to cancel ShotSpotter. But Richard explains why the study may not answer the question many people think it answers - especially if it measures non-shooting 911 response times while leaving out the core concern: how police respond when gunfire actually happens. Grant and Richard also dig into the bigger debate behind the technology: whether Chicago wants police rapidly responding to gunfire in high-violence neighborhoods at all, whether ShotSpotter was used properly by CPD, and what should replace it if the city believes the system was flawed. Along the way, they discuss dispatch clog, seasonality, media framing, the Adam Toledo case, violence interrupters, proactive policing, underreported crime, the Ferguson effect, Chicago’s open data problems, and why the city’s fiscal crisis and public safety crisis may be more connected than people want to admit. This is not a simple “ShotSpotter good” or “ShotSpotter bad” conversation. It’s about what Chicago knows, what it doesn’t know, and what happens when public safety policy gets built on partial evidence. A Four Star Podcast - Chicago, but better. A new episode Tuesday mornings at 6AM. Get it on YouTube or your favorite podcatcher. A City That Works Substack: https://citythatworks.substack.com/ Richard Day on X: https://x.com/richsday Chapters 00:00 The media is bad at math 03:20 What City Hall claimed 06:24 Catching shooters or saving victims? 10:25 Should police respond fast? 12:19 Dispatch clog and alert accuracy 16:05 Response times and misleading conclusions 20:16 Seasonality and crime drops 23:31 Underreported crime 26:19 Police pullback 28:25 Ideology and crime coverage 33:13 Technology and policing costs 37:03 Replacing ShotSpotter 38:54 Adam Toledo and civil rights 43:34 Violence interrupters 45:37 Mayor Johnson and data 47:00 Chicago’s open data problem 49:14 Violence and pensions 50:47 A City That Works Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    53 分