Chicago’s criminals celebrated Memorial Day with almost three dozen shootings that left three people dead.
But the blood-spattered three days is hardly news, and likely isn’t worth a front-page story. It was just another weekend in Chicago, where the mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is mostly concerned that too many reporters who cover City Hall are white.
Homicides have increased almost 40 percent over the same time last year.
“Least Violent Weekend”
However, despite the latest shooting totals — three dead, 30 wounded — the city “was on track for its least violent Memorial Day weekend since 2013, when 29 people were shot, six of them fatally,” the Sun-Times reported:
Last year, 10 people were shot dead and 39 others wounded over the holiday weekend — the deadliest Memorial Day weekend since 2015 when 12 people died.
Old or young, man or woman, no one is safe.
A 40-year-old man “was traveling in a car … when someone fired shots from the sidewalk, police said.” He was dead on arrival at the hospital.
A 29-year-old man “was on the sidewalk about 9 p.m. when someone got out of a car … and began shooting,” the Sun-Times reported. Another fatality.
Fatality three was a 26-year-old man who “was driving east on Ogden Avenue when he was shot in the face and chest…. The car came to a rest after striking a light pole.”
One survivor was “a 12-year-old boy [whoi] was grazed by a bullet.” He was “with a group of people about 1 a.m. when someone in a black Dodge Charger fired shots.”
What a 12-year-old was doing outside at 1 a.m. “with a group of people” the newspaper did not explain.
On Thursday, before the weekend bloodbath began, a bullet grazed a 7-year-old boy.
Like U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal, awaiting a banzai charge of General Tojo’s fearless if doomed troops, Chicago’s police department and community leaders had braced for the weekend.
“In preparation for this weekend, the Chicago Police Department canceled days off and put officers on 12-hour shifts. Meanwhile, community groups fanned out across the city to draw people out of the line of fire,” the newspaper reported.
Like the cops, unfortunate and endangered city dwellers always know what’s coming, the newspaper reported:
“I can’t say I’m shocked,” a woman who was returning home with her husband said. “As soon as it gets warm, the shooters come outside.”
“We usually hear about shootings about a block away from here, or in the alleys a block away. It has never made it to our front yard like this,” her husband added.
Who Gets Shot, Lightfoot’s Major Concern
Chicago’s black residents suffer the most from the anarchy. Of the 256 killed so far this year, 204, 79.6 percent, are black, the newspaper’s database says. Almost all, 196, were shot.
Another 23 victims were Hispanic. Those two groups represent 88 percent of the victims.
Another 15 were white.
If homicides continue at the rate so far, almost two per day, by December 31, about 620 people will have been killed.
Shootings have jumped 36 percent over the same time last year, the Sun-Times reported. “Homicides are spiking in areas long afflicted with gun violence.”
In the past 12 months, the city notched 794 homicides; 620 of the victims were black, and 576 of those were shot.
As black Chicagoans have been dying, however, Lightfoot has been worried about another problem: too many white reporters.
Thus, she recently announced a minorities-only interview policy.
“It’s a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American,” she tweeted. “Diversity and inclusion is imperative across all institutions including media. In order to progress we must change.”
At the time, the city’s homicide total was 228. Since then, another 28 have been killed, or more than two per day.
After Lightfoot refused an interview with a white reporter for the Daily Caller, the publication sued.
