A total of 61 people were shot in Chicago over the Christmas holiday weekend, with 11 of them dying from their wounds. Seven were murdered on Christmas Day alone, more than the last three Christmases combined.
This brings the grisly total to more than 4,252 people shot so far this year in Chicago, 770 of them fatally. Last year by comparison there were 2,989 people shot with 492 of them succumbing to their wounds. That’s an astonishing 56 percent increase in homicides in one year — and the year is not quite over yet.
The New American has been tracking the Windy City’s violence, suggesting back in April that, based on the stats from the first quarter of the year, “2016 could see more than 500 people killed by gunfire with nearly 3,000 shot and wounded.” It is indeed tragic that the number actually killed is so much higher than our earlier estimate. The shocking number of killings in 2016 adds further confirmation of the deadly consequences of “de-policing” that was already becoming evident when we wrote about it in April: the backing away by Chicago’s finest for fear that their actions would subject them to various sanctions imposed by the state to keep the ACLU happy. Said TNA: “The next quarter could confirm that this conclusion — that crime is up because police enforcement is down — is valid.”
Sadly, it is valid. Through mid-December there were roughly 50,000 arrests in the city compared to nearly 70,000 last year at the same time. And that number, 50,000 arrests, is less than half the number made in 2010, the year before Rahm Emanuel, the city’s current mayor, took office. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson talks a good line: he knows who is committing the murders, and he knows why:
The violence primarily occurred in areas with historical gang conflicts on the South and West sides of the city. We now know that the majority of these shootings and homicides were targeted attacks by gangs against potential rival gang members and groups who were at holiday gatherings.
These were deliberate and planned shootings by one gang against another. They were targeted, knowing full well that individuals would be at the homes of family and friends celebrating the holiday.
[They] were followed by several acts of retaliation.
Johnson also spoke a truism: gun laws don’t work: “These gun offenders have repeatedly shown us that they’re not going to play by society’s rules.” As the city’s chief law enforcement official, he also knows the solution: “arresting the right people for the right reasons.” Said Johnson:
But we have to focus on what’s really hurting Chicago right now, and that is the gun violence. I’m not a fan of mass incarceration. But [speaking directly to the perps] if you decide to pick up a gun, pull the trigger and shoot somebody, I don’t care what your rap is, you should go to jail for it.
Johnson, to his credit, also spoke about the forces aligned against him: “anti-police sentiments” stirred up by such groups as Black Lives Matter. Those sentiments, said the superintendent, have encouraged gang members to take matters into their own hands, knowing that the media, and much of the black population in those areas, will support their criminal activities. Said Johnson: “When [gang members] feel the public will speak out for them, and not the police officers, that’s giving them the power to go out and do what they do.”
This is precisely the result of the lies and hatred spewed by Black Lives Matter. The Marxist group, founded in 2013 and funded by far-left billionaires, has been telling blacks that America was “built on Indigenous genocide and chattel slavery” and it “continues to thrive on the brutal exploitation of people of color.”
At a rally in New York City in 2014, BLM supporters chanted: “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!” Six months later a BLM-sponsored rally incited supporters to chant: “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon!”
A month later, on a BLM-affiliated radio program, hosts laughed at the assassination of a white Texas sheriff’s deputy, boasted that blacks were like lions involved in a “race war” against whites and happily predicted that “we will witness more executions and killing of white people and cops than we ever have before.”
Taking advantage of the vacuum left by the “de-policing” by the Chicago police, gang members feel free to ramp up their criminal activities. Ninety percent of those dying by gun violence in the city so far this year were gang members, had criminal histories, or were otherwise already known to the police.
The ACLU and upstate politicians share a large part of the blame for the escalating crime wave in Chicago. A compromise settlement between those politicians and the ACLU has burdened police officers with requirements to complete excessive paperwork explaining the circumstances behind every street stop. This, coupled with the implied threat to their careers if they fall to toe the bureaucrats’ line, has led to the drop-off in police stops and arrests. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the rest is predictable.
And so it will likely continue into the New Year. With 2016 setting the record with 4,300 people shot and 770 of them dying from their wounds, who is to say that 2017 won’t be even worse? In fact, without a change in policy, it likely will be worse, cementing into place a perception that Chicago is the murder capital of the country, thanks to a Marxist revolutionary group funded by wealthy leftists, the policies advanced by a far-left mayor, upstate politicians, and the ACLU, and a compliant media.
Without a change in policy, the attack on police — and the vacuum created — will continue apace, setting the stage for the ominous intervention of federal authorities..
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
