Judge Peggy Chiampas watched as her courtroom, filled with local and national news reporters, protesters and activists, emptied on Wednesday afternoon.

They assembled for Malcolm London, a poet and activist, arrested in the first night of the Laquan McDonald protests and accused of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. London blackened a cop's eye, police said. Charges dropped, the judge told him, "you are free to go." Everyone rose to leave, but the judge had something more to say.

"Why don't we have a packed courtroom for this?" Chiampas asked, staring at their backs. Because what came next on the docket, what few stayed to see, is the human tragedy that unfolds on Chicago's streets every day of the year — gunshots thrown with reckless abandon by warring, armed thugs and innocent victims wounded or worse by their stray bullets.

[ COMMENTARY ] In the case coming before Chiampas this time, we count an 11-year-old girl among the wounded, shot while walking down South Sangamon Street in Auburn-Gresham with her cousin in August.

"Why don't we have every single press person in the room for this case? For an 11-year-old child?" Chiampas demanded, her voice rising, according to the DNAinfo Chicago reporter who stayed behind as the others left. "Why aren't there people protesting outside for this case?"