Only the Paris Accords can save Chicago.
Via USA Today:
At least 78 people have been shot in the nation’s third-largest city since Monday, a troubling uptick of violence for a metropolis that has seen some recent success in reducing shooting incidents.
The surge in violence, which includes five people who have been fatally shot, comes as Chicago Police Department officials have expressed optimism in recent months that gun violence was on the downward trend in a city that tallied more than 1,400 homicides in 2016 and 2017 combined.
Chicago recorded a 22.3% reduction in murders and a 26.5% decline in shooting incidents for the first four months of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017, according to police department data. April also marked the 14th consecutive month in which Chicago recorded a decline in gun violence, according to police department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
But as the weather has warmed — Chicago endured the fourth-coldest April on record this year but saw temperatures rise this week — the city has seen a spasm of violence.
At least 28 people were shot between Friday evening and early Sunday, according to police.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson hold a press conference flanked by community activists, local politicians and families of gun violence victims to urge Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner to sign a gun legislation bill that has been approved by the Legislature on March 12, 2018, in Chicago.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson hold a press conference flanked by community activists, local politicians and families of gun violence victims to urge Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner to sign a gun legislation bill that has been approved by the Legislature on March 12, 2018, in Chicago. (Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
Police and federal authorities on Sunday continued the hunt for an assailant or assailants who critically wounded an ATF agent a day earlier on the city’s Southwest Side. Police said the agent, who was shot in the face but is expected to survive, was part of a newly-created strike force – a partnership between federal and local law enforcement – aimed at stemming gun violence in the city.
Police officials said several of the incidents, including a drive-by shooting late Friday in which a 41-year-old man and 17-year-old boy were wounded, appear to be gang-related. In two separate shootings Saturday afternoon on the West Side, a 26-year-old man and a 25-year-old man who police said are documented gang members were shot. The 25-year-old who was shot multiple times as he rode a bike was rushed to a nearby hospital and listed in critical condition, police said.
In the latest fatal shooting, a 39-year-old man was gunned down late Friday on the city’s South Side. Police said they responded to calls of shots fired in the area and officers found the victim dead in an alley with gunshot wounds to the face and buttocks. He was pronounced dead at the scene.