Aisha Jones, who lives in the area, told Al Jazeera that the city’s violence is so rampant that her daughter and two sons are scared to leave the house.
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John Yang has the story.
Despite these grim numbers, there persists among many the notion that it is the city’s police officers who bear the greatest share of blame for all that ails Chicago.
The killing of National Basketball Association star Dwyane Wade’s cousin Nykea Aldridge, who was caught in crossfire as she walked her newborn on Chicago’s South Side, has brought more attention to the widespread violence in the Midwest’s largest city.
Johnson, he said his biggest successes came when he directly asked the community what should be done to address violence, particularly around specific festivities and events.
Aldridge, 32, was hit by stray bullets as she pushed her newborn in a stroller shortly after enrolling one of her other children in school, ABC Chicago station WLS-TV reported. The surge in gun killings has largely been concentrated there and on the West Side.
Just less than 24 hours before Diann Aldridge’s death, her cousin, Dwyane Wade, spoke in front of a crowd at a YMCA in Chicago’s South Side.
Police said the siblings are gang members and convicted felons, who were out on parole when they accidentally shot Wade’s relative.
“I’m not suggesting that the media shouldn’t pay attention to those issues, but what gets much less attention are the kind of day-to-day outbursts of gun violence that we see primarily in America’s inner cities, including in a place like Chicago”, Earnest said. When will enough be enough?
Johnson cited a yet-to-be-published analysis by researchers at the University of Chicago Crime Lab of 2015 murders in the city that found almost 40% of those arrested past year for homicides had previous arrests for gun crimes.
It’s been a hard summer for Chicago, which has recorded more murders than larger cities NY and Los Angeles have tallied combined.
In a bad year, August was especially grim.
We are joined from Chicago by Jedidiah Brown.
Former violence interrupters are calling for the Operation CeaseFire program to again get state funding to help reduce the rising violence in Chicago. And by Lori Lightfoot. She reportedly was not the intended target.
Thanks for being with us. That reminds me of an old nugget of good advice: If you don’t have the time to do it right, when will you find time the time to do it over?
Many in the Chicago community believe that a struggling economy is part of the problem, especially in African-American neighborhoods. Is there anything you can point to, from your point of view, that’s a sign of hope, that’s a sign of progress? In July, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a police group, released a survey showing that murders had risen 15 percent in the first six months of 2016 compared with the year-ago period in the country’s largest cities.
And I think shining a light on it and transparency around that is something that’s very important.
“We’ll have adequate resources out there over this holiday weekend to ensure everyone has.an enjoyable holiday”, he said. “So until we hold these repeat gun offenders accountable for their actions, we’re going to continue to see this violence”, Johnson said.
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We have got to use what I would call soft power.
