While Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised during her inaugural address to address crime and violence in the community, she’s now a month away from the midpoint of her four-year term, and problems with crime and violence in the city are far worse than when she arrived at City Hall. Chicago’s most recent crime spree will be the final straw in Mayor Lightfoot’s political career. Democrats continue to ‘defund the police’ under the theory that the presence of police contributes to crime, which has never been more wrong.
According to crime statistics released by the Chicago Police Department, the city’s crime wave is continuing and shows no sign of slowing down. In March 2020, there have been 146 shooting incidents in the city with 175 victims. In March 2021, there were 233 shooting incidents with 298 victims. If you compare these numbers to a few years back, Chicago reported that in March of 2018, there were 136 shootings with 151 victims.
Homicides are up 33%, as well as reports of carjackings. It is also reported that 21 Chicago Police officers have been shot in 2021 so far, with four of them being shot just in March.
On Tuesday, April 13, alone, there were twelve people shot and wounded. It started at 1 a.m. when two males, a 23-year-old and a 25-year-old, were shot in the back while standing in an alley. About an hour later, a woman was shot in a drive-by shooting and another incident occurred with a 33-year-old man being shot while sitting in a vehicle. The shootings continued throughout the day, with the last one occurring at 11:50 p.m.
There was also the shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, which Mayor Lightfoot called a “complicated and nuanced story.” Mayor Lightfoot, along with country prosecutors, told the entire city of Chicago that Adam Toledo was holding a gun in his hand when he got shot.
Chicago Police soon released the body cam video of the shooting, which showed Toledo initially ran because he was a scared 13-year old but stopped, complied, and put his hands up. He was unarmed with his hands up the moment he was shot. Mayor Lightfoot made the comment that we must all proceed with “deep empathy and calm” during the situation. Mind you, these were not the comments she made to Black Lives Matter protesters last summer.
Activists were unhappy that Mayor Lightfoot called for “calm” following Toledo’s death and was chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Lori Lightfoot’s got to go” at rallies. Days later, the International Business Times ran a story that Mayor Lightfoot was going to resign over an alleged affair.
The rumor was started by Ja’Mal Green, a former Chicago mayoral candidate, who apologized for starting it but said that Chicago residents have been lied to since the beginning of the administration. She adds that 73% of Chicagoans think their city is on the wrong path and that Lightfoot lied about fighting against tickets, fines, fees, school boards, civilian oversight of police, and changing water lead pipes.
Mayor Lightfoot, who is married to wife Amy Eshleman, wrote in response to the rumor that she “doesn’t have any time for homophobic, racist and misogynistic rumors, today or any day.” In a series of tweets, Mayor Lightfoot announced that she would not be resigning and will continue to lead people across the city who elected her as mayor. “It’s shocking and disappointing to see some media members and verified Twitter handles are peddling this trash as truth,” she adds.
Mayor Lightfoot is always full of excuses and never offers any answers. She even blamed the Trump administration a few weeks ago for the standoff between the city’s public schools and the teacher unions. Talk about failing at taking any personal responsibility. Blue cities are poorly led with bad priorities and the best thing Lightfoot could do now is to resign.