Chicago Police, ICE and the Fraying of the Thin Blue Line 

Rob Chadwick | 10/26/25 | The Hill

Shocking revelations from earlier this month out of Chicago should jolt every American out of complacency when it comes to public safety. A commander in the Chicago Police Department ordered officers not to respond to calls for help from federal law-enforcement agents who were under duress, surrounded by vehicles and under threat. 

This should not be dismissed as just a Chicago problem. It is a real, present warning sign for all of us of how deeply fractured our policing institutions have become. 

What happened in Chicago is not an isolated incident. Rather, it represents the next inflection point in a precipitous decline in law enforcement that has been gathering steam since the defund-the-police movement. 

Across the country, police departments are struggling with ballooning response times, with jurisdictions reporting that they have doubled the time it takes to react to 911 calls. What we are seeing is a rapidly developing erosion of the “thin blue line.”

This breakdown should give pause to every law enforcement officer, who now must wonder if their “brothers in blue” will be there. In the dispatch logs, federal agents reported they were boxed in by 10 vehicles, under attack and requested urgent backup. In response, the Chicago Police Chief of Patrol can be heard on dispatch recordings ordered: “No units will respond.”

Let that sink in: A law enforcement officer, in mortal danger, was denied assistance, not because there was no aid available, but because of a command decision not to send help.

Police unions and veteran law enforcement voices were swift to condemn the order. The Fraternal Order of Police called it “shocking and appalling,” reminding everyone that the unwritten rule — respond to officers in distress, no matter what — must not be abandoned for political considerations. That this could happen in a major American city in 2025 paints a deeply disturbing picture of our moral and institutional decline.

Since 2020, the nationwide uprisings and amplified calls for radical police reform, including defunding or abolishing police forces, have sent shockwaves through every department. In many cities, budgets were slashed, morale plummeted, and officers felt increasingly under siege.

Read the full op-ed from The Hill HERE.

Rob Chadwick is the principal training advisor for the United States Concealed Carry Association