Lawless Chicago experiences record holiday violence, with 109 people shot, of which 19 were fatalities, over the July 4th weekend.
By Eileen Griffin
In a record, even for Chicago, over 100 people were shot over the July 4th holiday weekend.
Many Chicago residents, including children, became victims of violent shootings over the holiday weekend, the Chicago Tribune reports. The criminal activity included 4 mass shootings. In one incident 8 people were shot in one location. Another incident resulted in 7 victims.
Approximately 45 people were shot on July 5th. Another 55 or so were shot at other times between July 4th and July 7th. Of the 109 gunshot victims, 19 people lost their lives. Victims include men, women, and children.
Most of the shootings occurred in a location that is not unfamiliar to law enforcement. That part of Chicago is well known for gun violence spanning generations.
In 2023, during the same holiday weekend, 62 people were shot and 11 were killed, The Post Millennial reports.
In September of 2023, the SAFE-T Act became law, Heartland Daily News reported at the time. The new Illinois law eliminated cash bail and reduced several crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Since that time, crime has skyrocketed in the city.
Businesses have been leaving the area or closing Chicago locations where they are plagued with theft and random criminal acts.
Teen mobs have been allowed to vandalize, loot, rob, and create general mayhem throughout the city with little or no consequences.
After the July chaos, city elected officials and leaders spoke at a press conference. Chicago Police Department Superintendent Larry Snelling told the group of reporters that he met with people in the neighborhood where one of the mass shootings took place.
“During the gathering I saw a neighborhood that was heartbroken, angry, fed-up,” Snelling said. “I also saw a neighborhood that wanted to come together and come up with a plan to fight this type of violence – this type of senseless violence that took the lives of two mothers and an 8-year-old child.”
“What we really have to think about is the brazenness of those who could walk into a home and see children and women and open fire on them.”
“I think all too often we don’t recognize what people in these neighborhoods are going through especially as it relates to violent crime,” Snelling said. “We need to take these people off the street, and we have to keep them off the street so that they don’t re-offend so they don’t destroy other families.”
“They have to be put away. If we are not doing that we are failing other families. We are failing people in our city.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) also spoke at the press conference. Johnson said that the people killed include 19 families whose lives are forever altered.
“This violence plague in our community is deeply personal.” Johnson said. “It’s not about simply tallying our pain. This violence that happened this weekend did not happen in a vacuum, however.”
“We are standing here today talking about a violent weekend because of generations of disinvestment and deep disenfranchisement in the exact communities where so much of the violence is taking place. But we are here to say emphatically, this is enough.”
Johnson said he would hold criminals accountable and that there would be consequences for the violent actors in the city.
While running for office, candidate Johnson vowed to hold police accountable, not criminals. He said he would focus on community safety programs and youth employment.
“And my administration will attack these root causes of crime and poverty by investing in the basics: good schools, good jobs, housing and mental health,” his campaign website said,
During his campaign for Mayor, Johnson was often tasked with explaining his support for the defund the police movement, Newsweek reported at the time. His position while campaigning was that policing and incarceration were not the answers to safer streets.
Johnson did not say he would reduce the number of police officers, but he may change their responsibilities and emphasize education, community, and jobs rather than law enforcement intervention.
“Johnson said he was determined to unite Chicagoans around a public safety plan that takes a new approach to the surge of crime and violence that began during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and has yet to fully recede,” wrote Heather Cherone for WTTW in April of 2023.
A year later the crime surge has expanded, not receded.
“Republicans are pouncing on the failures of so-called progressive policies, and let’s hope the GOP can force Democrats to move to the center for the sake of rescuing some of America’s great cities,” writes James Freeman for the Wall Street Journal.
“Chicago’s long one-party rule by Democrats also has consequences that cannot be blamed on the contemporary kookery of the progressive left.”
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