Chicago experienced a 36 percent increase in overall crime over last year, matching similar spikes in other Democrat-run cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
Notably, shootings and murders did go down slightly in the Windy City. Shootings declined by 11 percent and murders by six percent from the same time last year, when Chicago reported the most homicides in 25 years.
Burglaries, however, went up by 36 percent, while thefts increased 70 percent and carjackings were up 43 percent, per police tracking data of crimes through March 27.
Over in New York, crime complaints have risen by almost 45 percent so far this year. Murders in the City That Never Sleeps dropped by approximately five percent, while shootings jumped by about 17 percent.
In Los Angeles, overall violent crime grew by nearly 12 percent. That includes robberies and carjackings, although homicides decreased 13 percent and shootings went down by eight percent.
On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for an end to gun violence in the wake of a shooting in Sacramento that left six dead.
“What we do know at this point is that another mass casualty shooting has occurred, leaving families with lost loved ones, multiple individuals injured and a community in grief,” Newsom said in a statement.
“The scourge of gun violence continues to be a crisis in our country, and we must resolve to bring an end to this carnage.”
On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland addressed the issue of gun violence in Chicago while announcing the indictment of 12 people accused of illegally bringing over 90 guns across state lines and into the city.
Garland said that many of the trafficked guns “have been linked to shootings in the Chicago area in which multiple people have been injured and several killed.”
In New York, Mayor Eric Adams is taking a centrist approach to crime. A former NYPD officer, Adams ran on curtailing police abuse, but also has shown a willingness to tackle lawbreaking aggressively — a willingness that has provoked unease from his progressive supporters.
Since taking office, Adams has deployed hundreds of cops into the subway system to remove homeless people and torn down nearly 250 encampments throughout the city.
On Sunday, the mayor defended that policy.
“You don’t have to use police to remove the encampments in our city like we’re doing,” Adams said, differentiating himself from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who ordered police officers to arrest people experiencing homelessness who refused to go into shelters. “We’re doing a combination of social services, giving people the dignity they deserve. That is what we’re talking about, cleaning our streets and making sure that we don’t have a state of disorder.”
Politico notes:
“This is my history of fighting against heavy-handed and abusive policing. You can have the justice that we deserve with the safety we need,” Adams said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning. “I think that it is important for people to say, who’s implementing the proper use of dealing with quality of life: Eric Adams. I was a leading voice that testified in federal court about the overuse of police tactics. Now I’m in charge of that police department, and I know how we can run a police department.”
Adams said the NYPD’s controversial new anti-crime unit has taken “20-something guns” off the streets. He called on the federal government to boost funding for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to improve coordination and better track guns flooding cities — a conversation Adams said he had with President Joe Biden and chief of staff Ron Klain on Saturday.
Adams, who has called himself the “new face of the Democratic Party,” has gone on a national circuit that has included traveling to Chicago to speak with Mayor Lori Lightfoot about the influx of guns to inner cities; Washington, D.C., to coordinate with Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Metropolitan Police Department on a gunman targeting people experiencing homelessness and sleeping on the streets; and Baton Rouge to deliver the keynote address at the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives’ 2022 symposium.
The fervent Adams promotion is indicative of an effort by Democrats to attempt to reset their image on law and order, an issue on which Republicans are typically stronger.
Democrats can try to reinvent themselves as newly tough on crime, but will it work when voters realize they’re the ones who let criminals run rampant in the first place?
