At least 40 shot and four killed in a night of Chicago gun violence

[timosman]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1KR0BP

AUGUST 5, 2018

At least 40 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend during the seven hours from midnight Saturday to early Sunday morning, with four fatalities, city police said on Sunday, a stark violent streak in a city where authorities say gun violence has been decreasing this year.

“These were both random and targeted shootings on our streets,” said Fred Waller, Chief of the Patrol Division of the Chicago Police Department, in a press conference.

He said most of the shootings are connected to gang violence in the city of about 2.7 million people, the third-largest in the United States.

Police said gunmen targeted a block party, a gathering after a funeral, and other gatherings on a night where thousands of people gathered for a downtown concert.

Local media reported that the brunt of the violence happened in the city’s West Side, where 25 people were shot in separate attacks.

Waller touted that shootings in 2018 were down from last year.

The Chicago Tribune, which has been tracking shooting statistics, reported earlier this month that shootings in the city have declined, with 533 fewer shootings as of Aug. 1 than the same time in 2017.

“By no means do these statistics show that we have a victory,” Waller said.

He said that police are working with other law enforcement groups to target gang activity.

“I promise we will not be defeated,” Waller said.

More specifics on the shootings were not immediately available late on Sunday.

[Swordsmyth]

Chicagoans (particularly black inner city citizens) are furious at Mayor Rahm Emanuel's impotence and are asking President Trump for help.

VIDEO: Mayor Rahm Emanuel busts a move at South Side music festivalhttps://t.co/oyld95UDz8

(like he's dancing on the graves of the children that have been gunned down. look at me mommy, look at me!)
— SnorkyJr (@SnorkyJr) August 5, 2018

As Fox News reports, demonstrators took to the streets of Chicago this week to call for the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), blasting his administration for failing to curb the city's gun violence epidemic.




Protesters expressed their outrage over the lack of economic development on the South and West Sides of the city, compared to the North Side, as gang violence continues to plague their neighborhoods.

"Rahm Emanuel is a con man. His whole job is to keep black folks divided," one man told Fox News' Gianno Caldwell, who covered the march.

One woman said Thursday that Emanuel "doesn't care about anybody" except his own neighborhood and his own family, while another woman said Emanuel seems to care more about illegal immigrants in the city.

"African-Americans, we're citizens, and our ancestors built this country," she told Caldwell, whose younger brother survived a shooting last year that killed his best friend.

Rev. Ira Acree, one of the organizers of Thursday's protest, said residents are tired of the "tale of two cities," where one area is thriving and others are crippled by poverty and gang violence.
And finally, in the most shocking twist in today's divided nation, it is interesting to see Democratic leaders in Chicago calling for President Trump to involve the National Guard.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat who represents the West Side of Chicago, called on President Trump to help the city.

"Not everyone believes Chicago is a Trump-free zone. If he's serious about helping the people ... I accept his help. We can't turn any help away," said Ford, adding that seniors and children need to have safe streets and federal authorities need to help the local police.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...pree-ask-trump

[Schifference]

Obama should show what he is capable of and become Chicago's mayor and fix all the city's problems.

[Schifference]

Hillary is loved in that circle also. Hillary should move to Chicago, become mayor, be loved and adored by the masses and turn Chicago into a utopia.

If Trump did the aforementioned, which he would probably do without financial compensation from the city government, he would be demonized for gentrification and taking away all the affordable good housing.

[fedupinmo]

They're just celebrating Obama's birthday.

[brushfire]

60 for the weekend. If in Chicago, run for public transit. Its against the law to travel with a firearm on public transit, so everyone is safe there.

[The Gold Standard]

60 for the weekend. If in Chicago, run for public transit. Its against the law to travel with a firearm on public transit, so everyone is safe there.

It's against the law for most people to be anywhere with a firearm, so the whole city is safe. No need to worry.

[spudea]

The first step to getting help is admitting their policies have failed. That will never happen.

[timosman]

The first step to getting help is admitting their policies have failed. That will never happen.

Many people never move beyond the first of the five stages of grief - denial.

[Swordsmyth]

After a bloody Chicago weekend that left a dozen dead and another 62 wounded, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is facing a mounting political crisis -- with his rivals emboldened as they aim to unseat him in the looming mayoral election.
Several of Emanuel’s 10 challengers slammed the prominent Democrat for the city’s soaring crime and blamed him for everything from an understaffed police force to a lack of investment in Chicago’s economically downtrodden neighborhoods.
Emanuel has tried to fend off the attacks while calming an alarmed electorate, but the latest violence has only fueled the calls for political change in the February election.


“What happened over the weekend is absolutely horrific and unacceptable. It’s another tragic weekend in Chicago, and unfortunately, we’ve had too many of them,” former Chicago Public Schools CEO and mayoral candidate Paul Vallas said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “There is no substitution for providing the police resources we need to close this gap.”
Vallas blamed Emanuel for permitting the police department’s detective division to be “gutted through attrition” and accused him of shifting officers to various sections of the city for “political reasons.”


The harshest criticism came from two candidates with deep ties to the city’s beleaguered police department: former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and former Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot.
Stealing a page from President Trump’s playbook, McCarthy dubbed Emanuel “wasteful Rahm” in a tweet over the weekend and blasted the mayor for attending a Sunday afternoon event announcing $10 million in city upgrades to the downtown Riverwalk.
“Has wasteful Rahm even seen the South and West side? $10 MILLION would be a tremendous help to residents, especially children that live in poverty from these neighborhoods,” McCarthy tweeted. “Instead, he wants to waste more on an already perfect downtown attraction.”
McCarthy was fired by Emanuel in 2015 after the release of dashcam video showing a white police officer killing a black teenager by shooting him 16 times.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, he continued his attacks on the mayor.
"He hasn’t done anything to lower crime rates," McCarthy said. "He’s done exactly the opposite. He's created this political landscape that exists in this city based upon his own politics. … And that’s simply not acceptable."
He added: “People are dying in record numbers here. And that’s got to stop.”
Lightfoot said in a statement that Emanuel was only focused on ensuring public safety in certain neighborhoods and accused him of remaining silent in the face of what she called “a public health crisis.”


“Rahm Emanuel cannot sit this out—he’s the mayor, and our city is facing a public health crisis,” Lightfoot said. “Taking on gun violence goes far beyond policing: it’s about ending poverty and reversing decades of disinvestment through quality schools, career training, social services, and jobs in neighborhoods that have been ignored for too long.”
Speaking at a news conference on Monday alongside Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, Emanuel called the outburst of violence “unacceptable” and said that Chicago is “a better city” than how it is portrayed.
"Our souls are burdened," Emanuel said. "It is unacceptable to happen in any neighborhood of Chicago. We are a better city."
Besides taking heat from his rivals in the mayoral race, Emanuel was also besieged on the national level with Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, blaming Emanuel — former President Barack Obama's White House chief of staff — and decades of "one party Democratic rule" for the violence in a series of tweets.
The former New York mayor also tweeted his support for McCarthy, a Democrat, referring to him as "Jerry" and calling him a "policing genius."
Misspelling Emanuel's last name, Giuliani tweeted: "[McCarthy] can do a lot better than Mayor Emmanuel who is fiddling while Chicago burns." Giuliani also falsely claimed that Chicago had "63 murders this weekend."
Last weekend, though, marked the worst violence of any single weekend in the city since 2016, when homicides in Chicago hit records that had not been seen for two decades.
The victims of the weekend shootings ranged in age from 11 to 63, according to police. One teenage girl died after being shot in the face. A teenage boy was fatally shot riding a bike Sunday afternoon. Other shootings took place at a block party and a funeral.
Most of the shootings happened in poor neighborhoods on the West and South Sides where gangs are entrenched, Johnson said, adding that so far there had been no arrests in any of the weekend shootings.
Days before the attacks, some 200 protesters marched through a well-to-do North Side neighborhood and briefly closed Lake Shore Drive, calling for more resources to stem violence in poor areas.
Tio Hardiman, one of the organizers of last week's rally, said members of the black community need to take the initiative by mediating truces between gangs.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...o-weekend.html

[Swordsmyth]

Chicago police have made no arrests for the weekend’s 70-plus shooting victims as witnesses to the incidents refuse to come forward.

On August 6, Breitbart News reported on the violent weekend, noting that 11 of the 70-plus shooting victims died.
USA Today reports that witnesses are refusing to come forward to name suspects in the shootings. In fact, wounded shooting victims are refusing to speak as well.
This silence was modeled by 23-year-old Romell Young, a young man who was shot after a fist fight in Chicago earlier in the year. When police approached Young in the hospital and asked him about the gunman he refused to give details. And when asked by news outlets he remained mum, saying only, “I believe karma is (vengeful), you feel me?”
Following last weekend’s violence with no arrests, Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) and Chicago Police Superintendent responded to the dearth of witnesses by pleading with people to tell police what they know. Johnson said, “You all know who these individuals are, they come into your homes every day, sleep with you every night. Grandparents, parents, siblings, significant others — you know who they are.”
The silence from witnesses contributes to the fact that the Chicago Police Department “has solved far fewer murders over the last several years compared to most other major departments around the country.” In 2016 they were only able to make arrests or at least identify the suspect in 26 percent of the cases they investigated. And 2016 was a bloody year, with nearly 800 homicides in the Windy City.
In 2017 there were 650 murders, yet the Chicago Sun-Times reports that police only made an arrest or at least identified a suspect in 17.5 percent of the cases.

https://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...oting-victims/

[brushfire]

Chicago police have made no arrests for the weekend’s 70-plus shooting victims as witnesses to the incidents refuse to come forward.

On August 6, Breitbart News reported on the violent weekend, noting that 11 of the 70-plus shooting victims died.
USA Today reports that witnesses are refusing to come forward to name suspects in the shootings. In fact, wounded shooting victims are refusing to speak as well.
This silence was modeled by 23-year-old Romell Young, a young man who was shot after a fist fight in Chicago earlier in the year. When police approached Young in the hospital and asked him about the gunman he refused to give details. And when asked by news outlets he remained mum, saying only, “I believe karma is (vengeful), you feel me?”
Following last weekend’s violence with no arrests, Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) and Chicago Police Superintendent responded to the dearth of witnesses by pleading with people to tell police what they know. Johnson said, “You all know who these individuals are, they come into your homes every day, sleep with you every night. Grandparents, parents, siblings, significant others — you know who they are.”
The silence from witnesses contributes to the fact that the Chicago Police Department “has solved far fewer murders over the last several years compared to most other major departments around the country.” In 2016 they were only able to make arrests or at least identify the suspect in 26 percent of the cases they investigated. And 2016 was a bloody year, with nearly 800 homicides in the Windy City.
In 2017 there were 650 murders, yet the Chicago Sun-Times reports that police only made an arrest or at least identified a suspect in 17.5 percent of the cases.

https://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...oting-victims/

Not unusual - there's something like a 30% historical arrest rate. Also, redeye had to track the murders because chicago outsourced the data in order to circumvent FOIA and FBI crime stats.