EDITORIAL: Chicago takes victim blaming to an absurd new low

City governments used to stop crime by apprehending thieves. Chicago has a different strategy: Let the perps roam free while going after the companies that make products people steal.

Vehicle thefts are a major problem in the Windy City. In 2019, thieves stole nearly 9,000 vehicles. By 2022, the number had increased to more than 21,000. This summer, Axios reported that auto thefts had more than doubled compared with last year. If that trend continues, there will be 40,000 vehicle thefts in 2023, a quadrupling in four years.

Most criminals get away with the crime. Last year, police solved just 4 percent of these cases. In a simpler time, the solution would have been obvious. Put more police on the streets, emphasize grand theft auto, arrest the criminals and send them to jail. Would-be car thieves would change their behavior as they realized they faced a real possibility of doing prison time.

Sending people to jail, however, isn’t a priority for Chicago officials. Kim Foxx is the state’s attorney in Cook County, the top prosecutor in the nation’s third-largest city. She has dismissed tens of thousands of felony cases and done so at a significantly higher rate than her predecessor. She also has pushed to end cash bail.

But even soft-on-crime politicians know they need to do something about car thefts. So now, Chicago is suing automakers Kia and Hyundai. The city contends that the automakers produced cars that are too easy to steal. That may sound like a parody of progressive government, but it’s really happening.

The city says that cars they produced between 2011 and 2022 don’t contain sufficient anti-theft technology. It claims most other car makers provided this technology. Both companies say their cars complied with federal regulations.

The city is right that thieves are targeting these types of vehicles. It says around 500 Kias and Hyundais were stolen in the first half of 2022. That surged to more than 8,300 in the second half of last year.

What changed? A social media trend that showed people how to quickly hot wire Kias and Hyundais. It spread like wildfire on sites such as TikTok and Instagram. Soon teenagers and kids even younger were stealing cars and posting videos of their reckless driving. They had little regard for the law or their victims in pursuit of social media fame. Why not? There were no repercussions.

In other words, Chicago officials are upset these car companies didn’t change their products years ago to prevent a social media fad that started in 2022.

This is not serious governance. It’s an attempt to distract from the failure of Chicago officials to maintain acceptable levels of order and public safety.