Mayor Lori Lightfoot always has an excuse for critics when they ask why her city is one of the most violent and deadly in the entire country.
She often claims that she is being unfairly targeted because of her gender, race, and even sexual orientation.
Other times, mayor Lightfoot simply denies that any violence is occuring at all.
Regardless of her own denial, the violence occuring in her city is getting worse every day.
In fact, July 4th weekend marked the deadliest weekend of 2021 for Chicago.
Over 100 people were shot, and at least 19 were killed.
As for mayor Lightfoot, she still won’t accept any responsibility.
The Washington Times has more on the deadly weekend in Chicago:
Violence spiked in Chicago with 104 people shot over the long Fourth of July weekend leaving 19 dead and 13 children wounded, according to reports.
It marked the deadliest weekend in Chicago this year, as a political back-and-forth continues in city halls and on Capitol Hill over a nationwide crime wave.
“I wish that whatever this madness is going on, I wish that it would stop,” Chicago resident Toni Watkins, told The Chicago Sun-Times. “Usually, I feel safe around here. But now this has me questioning it because it’s close to home right now.”
The gun violence over the weekend was tallied in a Chicago Sun-Times database.
Two Chicago police officers were among those wounded over the weekend. They were shot while dispersing a crowd early Monday morning. At least 33 officers have been shot at this year, according to Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown.
The holiday is traditionally a dangerous time in the city. Superintendent Brown had predicted that the holiday weekend would be the “most challenging weekend of the year” in a recent meeting with Chicago leaders.
The city’s June crime statistics showed a 20% decrease in homicides and a 13% decrease in shooting incidents compared to June 2020. But the city more than matched total homicides for the first six months of this year compared to the same period in 2020, which was one of the deadliest years in Chicago in decades. As of the end of June, homicides remain up 33% over the first six months of 2019.
The rise in crime rates has put Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on defense. She recently pointed to lax gun laws in surrounding states as well as deeply rooted social and economic issues as the cause of the violence.
“I believe that violence is a manifestation of systemic problems, and it’s a public health crisis,” Ms. Lightfoot said in a local television interview “When you see, in way too many neighborhoods, a lack of jobs, a lack of investment – these are historic, decades-long problems.”
The Chicago Sun-Times has more on the violence, which left at least 13 children wounded:
In the deadliest and most violent weekend this year in Chicago, over 100 people were shot over the long Fourth of July weekend, 19 of them killed.
Among the wounded were at least 13 children and two Chicago police supervisors. Five of the kids were shot within nine hours Sunday evening through early Monday.
Both the number of fatal shootings and the number of shootings overall are highs for 2021, according to a Chicago Sun-Times database of shootings.
Through July 4, the most recent city data available, 2,019 people have been shot in Chicago this year, an increase of almost 13 percent compared to the year before, and a 58 percent increase in shootings compared with 2019.
In one of the weekend attacks, a 15-year-old boy was critically hurt in a drive-by shooting Monday evening at 5:50 p.m. when a dark-colored car drove by and someone from inside pulled out a gun and fired shots in the 6600 block of South Langley Avenue in Woodlawn, police said.
About a half-hour earlier, a 48-year-old was arguing with a person in a home about 5:20 p.m. in the 8600 block of South Aberdeen Street when he was shot and killed, police said.
That followed an attack when two people were killed and four wounded, including a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy in Washington Park on the South Side.
That happened around the same time that a 6-year-old girl and a woman were shot in West Pullman and about four hours after an 11-year-old boy and a man were shot in Brainerd on the South Side. And late Sunday afternoon, a 5-year-old girl was shot in a leg, also in West Pullman.
The Washington Park shooting happened around 1:05 a.m. Monday in the 6100 block of South Wabash Avenue, where a large group of kids and adults gathered outside in a parking lot outside an apartment building to socialize and light off fireworks. Someone inside a car that drove by a group of people there started shooting, according to the police.
A 21-year-old man, shot twice in the head, and a 26-year-old man, shot in the torso, were pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center, police said.
The 12-year-old was struck in the buttocks and taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, according to the police, who said the 13-year-old was shot in a hand and also taken to Comer to be treated.
A woman, 29, was struck in the elbow and taken to the hospital in good condition, and the sixth victim, a 34-year-old woman, suffered two graze wounds, according to the police.
“I wish that whatever this madness is going on, I wish that it would stop,” said Toni Watkins, who lives in an apartment complex that overlooks the parking lot where the shooting was and has lived in the area for seven years. “Usually, I feel safe around here. But now this has me questioning it because it’s close to home right now.”
She said she’s fearful for her own 16-year-old daughter.
“I tell her every day, ‘If you’re going out or going to work, please be careful, and come back home to me. Stay away from those knuckleheads,’ ” Watkins said.
Watkins said she cried when she heard about an earlier shooting in which a 1-month-old baby was shot last week while in a car. She said she’s distraught over kids being shot: “They didn’t ask to be hurt. I just pray and hope that the kids are OK that got hurt.”
Mayor Lightfoot continues to blame everyone else for the violence.
She is peretuating the lie that there were no riots in 2020.
She calls any criticism leveled against her as sexist, racist, and homophobic.
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