After a Father’s Day weekend bloodbath in which 46 people were shot and eight were killed, including one by a police officer, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy have little to show for their claims of reduced crime across the city.
While those claims are technically accurate regarding crime statistics overall, the city is still plagued by violence, with 686 shooting incidents and 150 murders only halfway through 2013.
According to the Chicago Police Department Crime Statistics Portal, there were seven murders between June 3-June 9, and 34 more going back the previous three weeks. That four-week murder rate of 41 is identical to the same period of time in 2012.
On June 10th, Garry McCarthy bragged to reporters of the progress being made to reduce the city’s violent crime.
We’re having a good year in comparison to where we’ve been in the past in this city… We have a historical gun violence problem here, and right now we’re making real progress.
Just a few days after McCarthy’s comments, twelve people were shot, with one person killed. Add in this past Father’s Day weekend bloodbath of seven more murders and 46 shootings, and “progress” might be hard for city residents to see.
McCarthy claims Illinois needs even tougher gun laws, along with a 3.5-year mandatory minimum sentence for illegal gun possession, to see real reductions in violent crime.
Grassroots activist and south-side resident Paul McKinley had a different take, telling Breitbart News, “We already have the toughest gun laws in the country. People are not just killing people, these are not just gang murders, and the police and the media are not telling the truth about these crimes.”
“Narco-terrorism is plaguing this city as a result of Chicago’s sanctuary status for illegal-alien drug cartels,” McKinley claimed. “If the mayor and the superintendent want to make some ‘progress,’ they need to start correctly identifying the real cause for all this violence.”