Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plans over the last year or so to alleviate the violence plaguing the city she was elected to run simply aren’t working, as evidenced by the extreme failure of her “Our City, Our Safety” program. Who knew that injecting “resources” en masse instead of allowing police to do their jobs wouldn’t work?
At least 11 people were killed and another 62 were wounded in shootings across the Chicagoland area over the weekend. This past weekend’s numbers are up from the previous weekend, which saw at least 10 fatally shot and another 50 wounded.
The Chicago Sun-Times, which typically lists every fatal weekend shooting, didn’t do so this week. The outlet did note that a 17-year-old was one of the fatal victims.
As for the year-to-date totals for Chicago weekend shootings, 182 people have been murdered and another 996 have been wounded in Chicago in 2021. The Chicago Tribune, which keeps a tracker of all shooting victims in Chicago, hasn’t updated their numbers in nearly three weeks, but reported that — as of July 7 — 2,021 people have been shot in Chicago this year. That number is 164 more than at the same point in 2020, which saw the second most shooting victims in the last 10 years of tracking data.
As for Lightfoot’s “Our City, Our Safety” plan, Fox 32 - Chicago reported that in the year since it was implemented, “gun violence is up in at least nine of the” 15 areas focused on in the plan. And, some of the “resources” promised haven’t reached some of the most dangerous areas in the plan.
According to the report:
West Pullman is up 566% from this time two years ago, North Lawndale 201%, South Lawndale 160%, Chatham 116%. Only three of the areas targeted by City Hall are down from 2019: West Englewood, Roseland and Humboldt Park.
Yet the administration has yet to funnel any extra assistance to some of those dangerous neighborhoods, particularly on the Far South Side, according to the city’s website. The West Pullman community area, for example, has received none of the $36 million released by City Hall under the plan this year.
Sounds like more empty promises from Lightfoot, as well as an enormous increase in violence in the neighborhoods supposedly focused on in her plan.