Hey, Chicago!

[hjmick]

How are those new gun laws working out for you? Yeah, the ones implemented to circumvent the SCOTUS ruling...

Seems like someone didn't get the memo...

Teen Shot 22 Times
Teen was preparing to enter the 8th grade
By ADRIANA CORREA and LAUREN JIGGETTS


A 13-year-old boy was shot 22 times overnight in the West Pullman Neighborhood while he rode his bicycle, according to police.

Robert Freeman, of the 11500 block of South Perry Avenue, died from the wounds.

Freeman was standing next to a car on South Perry at around 8:15 pm on Wednesday when a masked gunman jumped out of an overgrown vacant lot and opened fire into a crowd of people, his mother, Theresa Lumkin, said. Freeman was the only one hit...


A witness said the shooter stood over the boy after he fell and continued to shoot him in the chest. His family believes the shooting was a case of mistaken identity...

Source: Teen Shot 22 Times | NBC Chicago

I am not suggesting that this story would have a different ending had they not passed the new laws following the recent SCOTUS ruling, the young man would still be dead. The point instead is, no matter how punitive the law, it will only be the law abiding citizens who are effected. The criminals will continue to leave their homes with their guns assembled.

 

[waltky]

700 murders in Chicago this year so far...

Grim milestone as Chicago murders surpass 700
Friday 2nd December, 2016: The number of murders in Chicago topped 700 for the first time in almost two decades, the US city's police department said Thursday (Dec 1).

With a month to go in 2016, the number of killings, almost all involving guns, is now more than 50 per cent higher than last year and stands at 701 - the most since 704 murders took place in 1998. There are more murders in this, the nation's third largest city, than in the two largest (Los Angeles and New York) combined. "The levels of violence we have seen this year in some of our communities is absolutely unacceptable," the city's police chief Eddie Johnson said in a statement. Law enforcement officials say much of the violence is related to the drug trade, illegal guns and gang battles. "Gangs and criminal elements appear to be more emboldened than in years past," police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told AFP earlier this month.

There have been 3,315 shooting incidents in the city so far, police said, 316 of them in November alone. The city is awash in illegally obtained guns, which is a major contributor to the problem, Guglielmi said. "Most cities are seeing a lot more guns being seized. Gun arrests are up," he said. City and state officials are attempting to change laws to crack down on gun offenders and make sure they serve longer sentences. The increase in bloodshed has come at a time of increased scrutiny for the Chicago Police Department, which is under a federal civil rights investigation for its treatment of African Americans.

Relations with majority-black communities are strained, especially after the release late last year of a video showing a white police officer fatally shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times, even after he had fallen to the ground. The video of the 2014 shooting - which was withheld from the public at first - shocked the city and the nation, and led to murder charges against officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot McDonald.

The police chief moved to fire seven other officers involved in allegedly covering up Van Dyke's actions. Their cases are still under investigation. Chicago police "will use every tool available to hold violent offenders accountable and will continue to work strategically to address crime and uphold its commitment to rebuild public trust", Johnson said. The city is planning to hire nearly 1,000 additional police officers over the next two years to bolster its force and help combat the rise in crime.

Grim milestone as Chicago murders surpass 700

 

[waltky]

So, what else is new?...

Chicago Homicides Even Higher Than Reported
Jan. 10, 2017 - The record-setting violence in Chicago is even worse than announced as new evidence shows the city suffered 50 more homicides last year than the numbers publicly reported in the past week.

The city posted a decades-high homicide count of 812 in 2016, per the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. That’s 15% greater than the 762 murders reported by the city's police department. The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that the county tallies “homicides” while the police number counts “murders.” Murders are defined as violent acts subject to criminal prosecution. Homicides, according to the medical examiner, include instances “when the death of a person comes at the hand of another person. This does not imply that all homicides are murders that would be subject to criminal prosecution.”

The city police count is also lower because it excludes violent, intentional deaths if the act is deemed justified, including police killings of residents. Per the county’s count, homicides rose 54% in 2016 over 2015 when Chicago had 528 deaths determined to be homicides. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for victims of homicide in Chicago with 725 decedents being felled by at least one gunshot wound.

African Americans also bore the brunt of the violence in Cook County, which includes Chicago. They accounted for 710 of the county-wide total of 915 (88% of which occurred in the city). Men comprised 90% of the homicide victims in the county. Other cities saw similar increases in homicides per a recently released FBI data. Cities with over one million inhabitants saw murder rise by 21.6% in the first half of 2016 over the first half of 2015, when homicide jumped in most urban centers after decades of falling murder rates.

Murder, per the FBI, is different than homicide. The former is defined as “murder and non-negligent manslaughter as the willful (non-negligent) killing of one human being by another.” The distinction accounts for some of the discrepancy between the oolice department’s official count of 762 and the medical examiner’s report of 812 in the city. The remainder may be due to jurisdictional issues (such as a murder occurring within city limits but under the jurisdiction of a different agency like the Illinois State Police) and victims’ dying in the following calendar year (12 individuals died in 2016 from assaults in previous calendar years per the Chicago Sun-Times.)

Chicago Homicides Even Higher Than Reported

 

[Claudette]

Only the law abiding pay attention to gun laws.

Criminals, gangs? Not at all.

I sure wouldn't live in Chicago.

 

[Kosh]

Proof that far left policies do not work, nor will they ever work..

This why you should never vote far left!

 

[waltky]

Chicago Shooting Captured Live on Facebook...

Chicago Shooting Captured on Facebook Live
February 16, 2017 - In a shooting caught on Facebook Live, a 2-year-old boy and a 26-year-old man were killed and a pregnant woman was wounded when a gunman opened fire as they drove down an alley in Lawndale on Tuesday afternoon.

"Call 911! They killed him. ... I have a bullet in my stomach," the woman screams as she runs from the car and into a house in the 2300 block of South Kenneth Avenue around 1:30 p.m. "Please, please, I can't breathe," she says. "Oh my God, please don't, Lord, I can't go. I can't go." Seconds earlier, the woman had been posting video on Facebook Live as she drove with her boyfriend at her side and the toddler, Lavontay White Jr., in the backseat. In the video, the couple are singing along to music when several shots are fired at the car. Lavontay and the man were both hit in the head, according to police. Superintendent Eddie Johnson said paramedics were able to revive the boy at the scene, but he was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital, as was the man.

The woman, 20, and her fetus were both listed in fair condition at Mount Sinai Hospital. Family members said the baby was about four months along and was expected to survive. The woman told police they were driving in the alley when a car blocked them behind an AC Delco Auto Electronics shop. A gunman got out and opened fire, police said. No one was in custody late Tuesday afternoon, but investigators suspect the man was the intended target. "We have very promising leads, we have video," Johnson said. "There's no doubt in my mind that we'll find him." The boy was the second child to die Tuesday from Chicago gunfire. Takiya Holmes, 11, died Tuesday morning from wounds suffered in a shooting Saturday. A second girl wounded over the weekend, Kanari Gentry Bowers, 12, remained in critical condition and on life support Tuesday.

In the Facebook Live video, the woman pulls into an alley and then looks to her left as the camera angle dips to face the windshield as gunfire can be heard. The camera jerks as the woman appears to jump from the car and run along a fence line as gunfire continues. Screaming, the woman appears to spee d past a house and struggles to open a gate. She yells for someone as she opens the door and enters a home. Once inside, the camera goes black but the audio can still be heard as the woman screams for help. A neighbor in his early 50s said he saw the child bleeding from his abdomen and the man in the car not moving. "The young lady was just hollering about her baby, she had blood from her stomach," he said. At the scene, police surrounded an older-model maroon four-door car in the alley. It had come to rest against an iron fence in the alley, its two front doors open. The three entrances to the alley were blocked off, as were streets around the scene. Neighbors poked their heads from their porches.

Outside Mount Sinai Hospital, motorists fought through afternoon rush-hour traffic along Ogden Avenue as news vans parked on the south side of the street, and a TV helicopter buzzed overhead. At Stroger, family members slowly arrived throughout the afternoon. A woman in a pink hat ran up to the ambulance and a man paced outside the emergency room speaking on the phone. A little before 4 p.m., family members and friends in a large group stood outside the hospital, some hugging each other, when a woman suddenly ran across the parking lot in tears. Two people ran after her and hugged her as she shouted. At Mount Sinai, family members of the woman gathered for the latest on her condition. Relatives said a bullet was lodged under the skin of her abdomen and doctors were trying to determine whether or not they can remove it safely.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a statement calling again for "meaningful gun control" and harsher sentencing for people who commit crimes with guns. "Every parent, regardless of where they live, should be able to take their child for a walk to the park or a ride in the car. These are normal rites of passage of childhood," Emanuel said in the statement. "These shootings must be a turning point for our city. Anyone with information about these crimes owes it to the families of these children to come forward."

Fatal Chicago Shooting Captured on Facebook Live | Officer.com

 

[waltky]

Over 100 injured and 14 killed in Chicago over July 4th weekend...

Over 100 injured and 14 killed in Chicago - all in 12 hours on the long Independence Day weekend
Thursday 6th July, 2017 - In a matter of 12 hours, reports from Chicago said that at least 101 people were shot and 14 people died.

On Wednesday a city newspaper, Chicago Tribune revealed in a report that nearly half of the shootings took place during the four-day holiday, in a span of 12 hours. It said that the youngest victim was a 13-year-old boy and the oldest a 60-year-old man. It said that about half of the shootings happened between Tuesday and Wednesday, mainly in Chicago's south and west sides. The increased number of incidents came despite the Chicago police department deploying more than 1,000 extra officers to staunch the violence.

On Friday, the Trump administration had announced that it was dispatching an additional 20 ATF agents to the city to stem gun violence that has left more than 1,000 dead over the past 18 months. The police confirmed on Wednesday morning that 14 people had died in the violence. Spokesman for the police department, officer Jose Estrada, said he could not verify but would not dispute the reports. Estrada added that it was hard to describe the weekend as a particularly difficult one for police. Adding, “Any time you have people shot and killed, it's difficult. I can't say this weekend was more difficult than any other. And it's a little unfair — does five days count as a weekend?"

Estrada was quoted as saying in another report that the department logged 71 shooting incidents between 6 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Wednesday. Detectives investigating the shootings, the spokesperson said, "suspect several incidents were retaliatory in nature and alcohol was a factor in others.” The report meanwhile said that the casualties are significantly higher than 2016, when 66 people were shot in Chicago over the Independence Day weekend, which lasted three days. This, the Tribune noted brought the total number of people shot in Chicago so far in 2017 to more than 1,800. However, it added that the figure was not as severe as last year when 2,035 people had been shot by this point in the year.

Further, at the weekend, Chicago police said shootings this year had declined 14 percent compared with the first six months of last year. U.S. President Donald Trump stated recently that he was sending federal agents to help local police contain the Illinois city's gang wars and control the violence in the massive city besieged by unrelenting gun crime. Over the weekend, the Justice Department and the city announced the formation of a joint strike force of federal and local law enforcement officials to ramp up prosecution of gun-related crimes. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated, “The Trump Administration will not let the bloodshed go on; we cannot accept these levels of violence.”

Over 100 injured and 14 killed in Chicago - all in 12 hours on the long Independence Day weekend

 

[waltky]

More Chicago people dying from gunshot wounds...

More people dying from gunshot wounds as Chicago marks 400 homicides
28 July,`17 - Four years ago, Chicago didn't record 400 homicides until just before Thanksgiving Day. The city has already passed that mark this year. Chicago is on pace to have a deadlier year than 2016, when gun violence reached levels not seen in 20 years, according to data kept by the Tribune. While fewer people have been shot this year, more of them are dying from their wounds.

An analysis of Tribune data shows the percentage of fatal shootings is running about 1.3 percent higher than last year. The percentage had been declining in recent years but started to rise last year. In 2013, about 15.5 percent of those shot in Chicago died. That percentage dropped to around 14 percent the next two years, but rose in 2016 to 15.2 percent, according to Tribune data. So far this year, 16.5 percent of the 2,150 people shot have died.

The mother of Kennatay Leavell kneels over his body at the scene of a fatal shooting in the 500 block of West Iowa Street on July 28, 2017, in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood. Leavell was shot multiple times in the face and pronounced dead at the scene, and a 34-year-old man was shot in the abdomen and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition.​

Combined with other cases, such as strangulations and stabbings, the number of homicides reached 400 on Thursday, two days earlier than last year. With half the summer to go, Chicago is on course to top 700 homicides for a second consecutive year, a mark that had otherwise not been reached in two decades. It's not clear what might be driving the increase in homicides, which are often linked to gang conflicts and are concentrated on the West and South sides.

Willie Ross leans over the body of his son Kennatay Leavell at the scene of a fatal shooting in the 500 block of West Iowa Street on July 28, 2017, in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood. Leavell was shot multiple times in the face and pronounced dead at the scene, and a 34-year-old man was shot in the abdomen and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition.​

Experts have cited everything from the proliferation of guns in the city to the opioid epidemic that could be intensifying disputes among heroin dealers. For the first six months of 2017, more than 90 percent of Chicago homicide2 victims were slain by gunfire, according to Police Department records. But in New York City, only about 49 percent of homicide victims were the victims of gun violence. According to a study released in January by the University of Chicago, 72 percent of Los Angeles' homicides in 2016 were with a gun.

Chicago police officers detain an emotional woman who crossed crime scene tape at the scene of a fatal shooting in the 500 block of West Iowa Street on July 28, 2017, in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood. Kennatay Leavell, 31, was shot multiple times in the face and pronounced dead at the scene, and a 34-year-old man was shot in the abdomen and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition.​

Chicago had 50 more homicides than New York and Los Angeles combined through mid-June, even though it is far less populous than both. Earlier this year, Chicago police highlighted the link between drugs and violence earlier this year with maps displaying how the locations of shootings and drug overdoses overlapped. The maps showed a high concentration of shootings and overdoses happening on the West Side near the Eisenhower Expressway, dubbed the "Heroin Highway" because of the easy access it provides for drug-buying suburbanites.

More people dying from gunshot wounds as Chicago marks 400 homicides

See also:

Chicago Officer Shot While Responding to Call
July 24, 2017 - A Chicago police officer was shot in the leg about 1:30 p.m. while she was responding to a call of an armed robbery at a cellphone store near 43rd Street and Ashland Avenue.

One person was shot dead and at least nine other people, including a Chicago police officer, were wounded in separate attacks within an 11-hour period Friday. The fatal shooting happened about 10:20 p.m. Friday in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side. Officers responded to a call of shots fired in the 8800 block of South Eggleston Avenue and found a man who had been shot in the buttocks and on the side of the body, police said. He was pronounced dead at 10:35 p.m.

On Saturday the medical examiner's office released information identifying him as Brendon Frazier, 23, of the same block on South Eggleston as where he was killed. The rain poured down as officers searched for evidence on a block lined with manicured lawns and brick homes. In the Back of the Yards neighborhood, a Chicago police officer was shot in the leg about 1:30 p.m. while she was responding to a call of an armed robbery at a cellphone store near 43rd Street and Ashland Avenue, according to officials.

Police work the scene where a 23-year-old man was shot in the head on the 7500 block of South Ridgeland Avenue in Chicago on Friday, July 21, 2017.​

Witnesses pointed out the direction where suspects fled. When officers got out of the car, one or more of the suspects opened fire, prompting police to shoot back, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said. The officer was in good condition at Stroger Hospital. Police arrested one person of interest in the case, and they were interviewing another person. In Logan Square, one man was shot and another man was stabbed during an attack about 8:30 p.m. in the 2600 block of West North Avenue, according to police.

The men were standing on the sidewalk when four men approached. Someone in the group opened fire, striking a 30-year-old man in the back and in the leg. A 19-year-old man was stabbed in the abdomen during the attack. Both men were taken to Stroger Hospital, where their conditions were stabilized.

In other shootings:

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

Almost 85 years of uninterrupted Democratic Party control.

 

[hjmick]

Seven years to move a thread. That has got to be some kind of record...



Though to be fair, in 2010 I'm not sure the Law and Justice System forum existed...