Instead of declaring war on criminals, Chicago’s newly elected Democrat mayor has seemingly declared war on her own cops.
Though Chicago has experienced a near-endless crime wave since around 2014, when the Ferguson incident in Missouri occurred, newly inaugurated Mayor Lori Lightfoot has, it would appear, chosen to blame this ongoing epidemic on the Chicago Police Department and its superintendent, Eddie T. Johnson, who for the record has only been on the job as the city’s top cop since mid-2016.
“I do continue to have faith in Superintendent Johnson. But it’s not secret that I’m pushing him and his leadership team to do better,” she reportedly said while in attendance at the so-called Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative conference in New York this Tuesday.
“You have to look at the long-term trends and one weekend does not a trend make. But, we’ve now had a couple of weekends since I became mayor where it feels like we’re losing the streets. And it’s an issue that I push them on and have concerns about.”
The latest spate of weekend violence left nine dead and 32 wounded. Meanwhile, six were killed and another 66 wounded during the Fourth of July weekend at the start of the month. While horrifying, these numbers were actually significantly lower than in past years:
60 shot, 11 killed in Chicago 4th of July weekend shootings – http://t.co/SdkMj5nd2U
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 7, 2014
Shootings, July 4th weekend: 10 dead, 52 wounded. #chicago pic.twitter.com/rouFRavjFA
— Peter Nickeas (@PeterNickeas) July 6, 2015
There were SIXTY SHOOTINGS in Chicago over the 4th of July weekend and y’all are talking about a black guy killed by a white person
— Michael McCray (@asap_mccray) July 7, 2016
CPD: Over 100 people shot in Chicago over 4th of July weekend.15 people were killed and 86 other injured in the shootings. 160 guns seized
— Vanessa Freeman (@VanessaFreeTV) July 6, 2017
“We want to know, not only what the problem is. The problem is quite obvious. But what we’re also pushing people to look at is, what are the solutions? What are you doing to adapt to the changing circumstances on the street?” the mayor reportedly added.
She appears to believe the problems are two-fold: First, Chicago police officers aren’t doing their jobs incorrectly, and second, the city hasn’t invested enough money in its poorer neighborhoods.
“What we’re seeing is the manifestation of a lot of disinvestment, a lot of poverty and a lot of poverty of soul — not just material wealth,” she reportedly said.
“When we have calls for Streets and San to take off graffiti as quickly as possible, or else there may be [more violence] because somebody will respond in retaliation to graffiti, it tells you the desperate circumstances that we are in as a community and how we need to be much more holistic in thinking about how we reach these mostly young men and young men of color.”
Speaking of analyzing the problem as a whole, some believe the true culprit for Chicago’s endless violence are the Democrat policies that arose because of the so-called “Ferguson effect.”
33 shot, 5 fatally, in Chicago this Memorial Day weekend — and it’s not even over yet. Many factors at play, some long-standing, but surely one is the regrettable Ferguson effect, based on the “hands-up, don’t shoot” anti-police progressive lie. https://t.co/rA1k398r3p
— Richard R Balsamo (@balsamo_r) May 27, 2019
Personally I would have been fine with the cops firing on these thugs in defense of themselves & the rule of law in general. But the Ferguson effect is real and the leftist establishment of Chicago (and nationally) would have crucified them for it. The downward spiral continues.
— Vahti Koira (@VahtiKoiraan) March 29, 2019
The huge spike in Chicago homicides in 2016 immediately followed political victories by BLM, ACLU, and Obama administration over CPD in the weeks following release of video bad shooting of Laquan McDonald on 11/23/2015.
Ferguson Effect is one of clearest in all social science.
— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) November 14, 2018
About two months after Ferguson thug Mike Brown’s justified fatal shooting in 2014 at the hands of a Missouri police officer, another young black man — Laquan McDonald — was killed by a police officer in Chicago after being confronted for walking around with a knife and breaking into vehicles.
In this case, it was determined that the suspect had been killed unjustifiably. Because of both this and the Ferguson incident — the latter of which many view as the true trigger for the police “reforms” that followed — Democrat politicians decided change was needed.
And so legislators in Chicago and other cities began “decriminalizing activities like possessing weed,” “reclassifying some felonies as misdemeanor or summary offenses,” shrinking police budgets and reforming the way police were allowed to deal with suspects, according to a CityLab report from 2016.
Combined, these “reforms” have been labeled the “Ferguson effect,” and according to renowned scholar Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, it’s the true culprit in Chicago.
“The growing mayhem is the result of Chicago police officers’ withdrawal from proactive enforcement, making the city a dramatic example of what I have called the ‘Ferguson effect,'” she opined in a 2016 report.
“Since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, the conceit that American policing is lethally racist has dominated the national airwaves and political discourse, from the White House on down. … In response to this feeling, cops in minority neighborhoods in Chicago and other cities around the country are backing off pedestrian stops and public-order policing — and criminals are flourishing in the resulting vacuum.”
Last year, President Donald Trump pledged to end the “crime spree” in Chicago by rolling back the Democrats’ policies and reinstating stop-and-frisk.
Chicago Police have every right to legally protest against the mayor and an administration that just won’t let them do their job. The killings are at a record pace and tough police work, which Chicago will not allow, would bring things back to order fast…the killings must stop!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 25, 2018
“I’ve told [the Justice Department] to work with local authorities to try to change the horrible deal the city of Chicago’s entered into with ACLU, which ties law enforcement’s hands and to strongly consider ‘stop and frisk,'” he said while speaking at the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in Orlando, Florida. “It works and it was meant for problems like Chicago. It was meant for it.”
And wouldn’t you know it, despite Lightfoot’s perception of the situation in Chicago — where she’s been in charge for literally less than two months — the situation there has actually improved in the past year.
“Murders, shootings and other violent crimes during the first four months of 2019 have decreased compared to the same period in 2018,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in May.
“The 136 murders reported between Jan. 1 and April 30 marked a 10 percent decline from the same period last year, while the 541 shootings marked an 8 percent drop from last year and a 41 percent drop from 2016, police said.”
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