Chicago requires convicted gun criminals to register, makes arrests but won’t prosecute violators

Every year, Chicago police officers arrest hundreds of people for violating the city’s gun-offender registration ordinance, a law that requires anyone convicted of gun-related violence or illegal gun possession to go to police headquarters yearly and register their home addresses.

But it’s rare that anyone is punished for failing to comply with the law, modeled on similar measures that were credited with helping reduce crime elsewhere.

That’s according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis that found most of those cases get dismissed in court — and that’s typically done at the request of lawyers representing City Hall.

Take Devaughn Levi. He was arrested three times in early 2020 for failing to register as a gun offender. But each of those misdemeanor cases was dropped at city lawyers’ request, court records show. Levi is now in jail, charged with felony gun-possession.