Mick Dumke is a star hire of ProPublica Illinois, and his decades of stellar work at the Reader and Sun-Times stand behind the nonprofit journalism powerhouse’s first project, published at WBEZ and in collaboration with the Sun-Times. Following street-level gun dealers for almost a year, Dumke delves into social and economic factors with sheer zeal. Of his main figure, Dumke writes, “An in-depth examination of Thomas’ case—based on police reports, court records and interviews, including a series of conversations with Thomas—shows how authorities target mostly street-level offenders, sometimes enticing them with outsized payoffs. In this and other cases, critics say their techniques raise questions of whether they are dismantling gun networks or effectively helping to set them up.” The account of all the moving parts and injustices upon injustices in the attempt to forge gun justice in our unfair city is bracing, infuriating, superb, essential.
