While the nation was narrowly focused on the shooting of a non-compliant criminal 50 miles north of Chicago in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Windy City was again engulfed in violence as more than 60 were shot, five fatally, in yet another bloody weekend.
Four of the five men killed: Martin Coleman, 27; Ronald Boyd, 26; Antione Rose, 33; and Devon Nelson, 31, were black. We’re told by a certain Marxist political group that their lives should matter. Also killed was 43-year-old Esteban Campos, who was listed as a white man.
Coleman was shot in the chest and the pelvis during an argument. Boyd was shot in the chest, neck, and leg. Rose was at a gathering on South Burley Avenue when an unidentified male stepped from a vehicle and shot him in the head and abdomen. Nelson was found unresponsive on the ground with a gunshot wound to his head. Campos was killed in the early hours of Sunday when he was shot multiple times in the head and body.
No suspects are in custody for any of the murders as of this writing.
The deaths over the weekend ending August 23 bring Chicago’s homicide total to 473 for the year. They come on the heels of a weekend where 50 were shot, five fatally. This weekend’s deaths push the number of August murders in Chicago over 40.
Lightfoot has repeatedly refused President Trump’s offers of federal assistance for her city, saying she will not allow the president to “foolishly deploy unnamed agents to the streets of Chicago.” Lightfoot has allowed federal agencies already active in the city to receive reinforcements under Operation Legend.
Despite Chicago having some of the most draconian gun laws in the nation, Lightfoot continues to blame the violence in her city on the supposed easy availability of firearms. She has repeatedly blamed the federal government for the violence in her city by not enacting strict gun-control laws.
“If the president was really committed to helping us deal with our violence, he would do some easy things. What he would do is push for universal background checks, he would push for an assault weapons ban, he would push to make sure that people who are banned from getting on airplanes can’t get guns,” Lightfoot has said.
If only we didn’t have that darned Second Amendment standing in the way of peace in Chicago’s streets.
What’s happening in Chicago is that the criminals — not the police and certainly not the citizens — are in charge of the streets. People in the city fear the criminals more than they trust the police’s ability to keep them safe. Lightfoot’s insistence on gun control is a complete misreading of what the actual problem is. Chicago’s criminal gangs are in charge of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods, and Lightfoot won’t allow police to truly engage them in any meaningful way. Murders go unsolved in the city because witnesses are afraid to come forward for fear of gang retaliation.
As mayor-elect in April of 2019, Lightfoot signaled her blasé attitude toward crime in her city when she referred to another bloody weekend as “summer violence season.”
None of the violence in her own city kept Mayor Lightfoot from commenting on the situation in Kenosha. On Twitter, the mayor had this to say: “Yesterday in Wisconsin, a police officer shot Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, a father, 7 times in the back. I am deeply disturbed by the video capturing part of the incident. I urge civil and criminal authorities to pursue an immediate and thorough investigation of the shooting.”
While the authorities in Wisconsin no doubt appreciate Mayor Lightfoot’s sage advice, even those bumpkins north of the Illinois border likely know that any police shooting should be investigated.
Perhaps some of the “peaceful protesters” in Chicago would like to show up outside Mayor Lightfoot’s home to wave a few signs and chant some slogans about the violence in her city, but Mayor Lightfoot has banned such outbursts on her street.
In a nation full of incompetent Democrat mayors leading cities to ruin, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is making a case for being the most incompetent of them all.
Photo: AP Images
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected].
