With all the recent mayhem in Minneapolis and some made-for-media events in other parts of the USA, Ye Olde Second Home, Chicago, has escaped the spotlight on the BLM riots.
It should not have. I’ve written before about the city’s increasing problems, but despite a spike in murders in 2014, crime did not seem like it was out of control, even if “minor” crimes were increasing as the DA refused to prosecute such crimes and the CPD, getting the hint, increasingly does not bother to make the arrests.
But no longer. The BLM riots in the city were more damaging than in most places, even if they did not involve the spectacular arsons of Minneapolis, and this has turned out to be no spike.
CHICAGO
The worst June in decades.
Incidentally only two of the victims were shot by the CPD and neither died. July has been much the same, with 53 shot and killed as of this writing, plus another eight murdered by other means.
Several years ago some private citizens established a website for Chicago gun crime, Hey Jackass (“Illustrating Chicago Values”) which contains an incredible amount of detail on all this. It’s been the weekends that have done the damage of course and even in early June they hit double digits of dead, so people began to suspect this was not temporary. At this rate the 2016 total of 808 could be beaten, especially since there is no sign the authorities know what to do.
And that starts with the Mayor, Lori Lightfoot (D).
At noon on Sunday, June 1st, after a night of BLM riots overwhelming the city, a teleconference was held between the Mayor and her Alderman. I don’t how many tough, “bad news” meetings you may have sat through in your lives but this is one for the ages: the 1 hour 18 minute recording is as much of a shit show as the streets. It’s incredible to listen to these traumatised “leaders” trying to get a handle on the situation right from the start of the recording:
Michelle Harris (8th Ward): “What are we going to have left in our community? Nothing… My major business district is just shattered. Why would Walmart or CVS come back to our communities?”
Lopez (15th Ward): “In my area, Ashland & 47th street, it’s just like a war zone… The gang members are now getting involved and threatening everybody. They’re threatening to shoot any Black people they see.”
Emma Mitts (37th): “It’s like the wild, wild west out there.”
Ed Burke (14th Ward): This is far worse than it was in 1968″
Susan Sadlowski-Garza (25th Ward): “My ward is a shit show,… They are shooting at the police. I’ve never seen the likes of this. I’m scared.”
Mayor Lightfoot: “It’s off the charts. Thousands of locations. Big stores. Small stores. Strip malls. It is all over the city….At Pulaski and Madison it took us three hours to clear a spot. These people were gassed with pepper spray twice, they didn’t give a shit. These people were literally in armed combat with the Police. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen shit like this before, not in Chicago…”
The meeting came to an end with this exchange:
Lopez: “We can’t expect our Police to be able to control this… I’m not comfortable telling the churches, those people, to be the intermediary in the middle of a riot that’s city-wide… We only have 370 National Guard on standby… half our neighbourhoods are already obliterated. It’s too late… My fear is once they’re done looting and rioting… what happens when they start going after residents?.. What’ll we tell people?”
Lightfoot: “Next question.”
Lopez: “What? No! I want an answer. It’s not something you ignore.”
Lightfoot: “I think you’re a hundred percent full of shit.”
Lopez: “Maybe you should come out to my neighbourhood… You need to check your fucking attitude….”
The terrible truth was that tried-and-tested CPD anti-riot plans, like lifting the river bridges to isolate rioters, were ignored. But that was simply a momentary scandal and Lightfoot tried to compensate by cancelling all leave and throwing officers into 12 hour shifts.
The worse scandal is that Lightfoot has simply never backed the CPD in everyday policing, slamming them at every opportunity. Neither does the Cook County District Attorney, Kim Foxx, who released dozens of arrested rioters later, dropping their prosecutions. Both women have made it clear that Police misconduct is their primary concern – and other things also:
Foxx gave a speech to informed all the SAO investigators the importance of this day. She also provided a history lesson on Jubilee Day… During this meeting, Fox encouraged several white investigators to apologize for their white privilege, which they did.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) had already begun reopening decade-old, closed disciplinary cases, trying to create a history to prove that they were “tough on cops”, insisting that everyone (except the police) has perfect recall of incidents deep in the past. Lightfoot started her political rise by heading COPA.
As a result the CPD have lost all confidence in the city government, morale has collapsed, retirements have jumped and the remaining officers are exhausted and have “gone fetal“. They’ll patrol and investigate but that’s it. Pre-emptive policing is dead, and the rapidly increasing crime figures show it. The homicide rate is simply the tip of the iceberg of other crimes.
Long time Chicago Tribune reporter John Kass, who has no fear of tearing both GOP and Democrat politicians new assholes when deserved, pleaded with her via an article in the lead to the July 4th weekend:
How many more babies will be murdered in Chicago’s street gang wars? The people, numbed, lose count. A 1-year-old shot in his car seat. A 3-year-old dead. Two girls killed by gang fire from the street while in their homes in separate incidents. A 3-year-old girl was just shot in the chest as she played outside her home.
It’s time to stop the bleeding, Mayor Lightfoot. That’s the first priority. Stop the bleeding. And lead your city.
The problem is that you can’t lead if people won’t follow and Kass is not unaware of the cause:
The Chicago Police Department is demoralized, exhausted and confused, and much of that is her own doing. She’s worked them to the bone. She lost them with her sarcasm and that ridiculous Bobby Rush popcorn drama.
She’s thrown her police under the bus, but on Wednesday she announced a 180-degree change in course. She needs them. Now she wants her exhausted cops to sweep problem areas and make arrests, even if social justice warriors complain.
Desperate times can bring about a change in principles…
Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) won’t help her. He’s a soft billionaire, a marshmallow who wants to be liked and thinks he can become president. He cares about optics. He won’t order in the National Guard. If the killings happened in Wilmette and Winnetka, he’d send them in. He’d build a moat. But he’s not being pressured about the killings on the South and West sides.
… as well as the same realisation about BLM that’s starting to occur to others across the nation…
Notice that Black Lives Matter and their allies aren’t leading any angry demonstrations about Black and brown children being cut down in Chicago. Those dead babies have no political utility. Their lives don’t help the activists leverage the November elections. So those lives are ignored.
BLM likes optics that are politically useful – just like billionaire Democrat Pritzker. Who would have guessed?
I’m betting that this is just simple desperation, and this brings us to the heart of the problem:
She’s a brilliant woman, a person of integrity, and I still support her.
As goes Kass, so goes the rest of Chicago voters. The city last had a Republican Mayor in 1931. This is what you get from a One Party state: different ideas dismissed out of hand, let alone tried in practice.
No Minister 
Your table of June deaths doesn’t prove much at all. June 2015 (51)and June 2019 (50) are vitally the same, and so are June 2017 (86) and June 2020 (90).
Have large parts Chicago been destroyed and have virtually collapsed, as your quotes from ! June are supposed to demonstrate. I don’t actually know, but frankly I am skeptical. If Chicago has collapsed there is very little news coverage of the fact, and I mean US news outlets.
I suspect Chicago has “escaped the spotlight” because the picture you are trying to paint is not actually true.
Errrrrrrrrrrrr what?
Did you stop reading at 2019
During the second war, Chicago was targeted for population replacement. Ford, his WASP buddies and the CIA orchestrated the great urban displacement in northern cities. Many people from the south were shipped in to run the factories, but also to displace the uppity Catholics. Goodness, one of them actual got into the Presidency. But they took care of that JFK situation quick smart.
Hence suburbia, possibly world wide, was a creation of the CIA and their mass psychological social engineering departments. Divide et impera: Divide and Conquer. This strategy is at the heart of many of the “global” conflicts.
The program continued, up until today, with alternative masters though. BLM is funded by SOROS like creatures. The African was used as a soldier pawn to attack the idea of America. His culture was converted from a God-fearing family man to a sex mad rapper gangster with a Heart of Darkness. His culture has been devastated. This is a manufactured crisis. The culture might be cured if we were allowed to discuss the problem.
Some knew what was being done to them, but the money had too much sway:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/666184.The_Crisis_of_the_Negro_Intellectual
BLMBNTOB The new ant iffa group …
Black Lives Matter But Not To Other Blacks
Last weekend 60 shootings and 10 deaths in Chicago
Over the last year 3 due to the cops and you guessed it 500 odd to the black population.
Suggest Wayne you put away your painting kit and get some facts to support your view.
PB thats one conspiracy theory too far for me..got a better book than that. Perhaps they went north because they wanted to as there were jobs there?
Auckland is a shithole run by the Left in NZ but without the crime of Chicago. Thats what happens when you are not grounded in reality
Yes it does seem out there. Try this book rosco. I couldn’t believe it at first.
Urban renewal as ethnic cleansing.
https://www.fidelitypress.org/book-products/the-slaughter-of-cities
PB thanks I will actually look at both of them.
Seems that Thomas Sowell is the only black grounded in reality but I guess there are a lot of them out there who you dont hear about.
I mean to say most people with a brain want to join the middle classes, that has been world history to date.
But it seems there are some socially conditioned people out there who either dont want to, who dont value education or are trapped by welfare.
I suspect PB if you want a conspiracy theory look no further than the rise of the drug trade from the 1960’s.
The history of Detroit, Chicago, Maori in NZ would mirror that rise exactly.
Stolen from Jibber Jabber over on KiwiBlogg
Thomas Sowell
Tomas, as usual, you try to draw connections where there are none.
No one is disputing Chicago has a crime problem, a gang problem. Your continual attempts to link civil disobedience, protest, and 1st Amendment rights, to gang violence is beyond a joke.
This country was founded by people protesting what they saw as injustice and trying to create a better way. It led to some terrible violence and a full scale war. I am sure you would have stood at Valley Forge and yelled at Washington for being a violent thug and to stop trying to destroy Philadelphia. He had no consideration for the Philadelphia people, just trying to run their business, and showed utter contempt for the lawful authorities, rounding up a gang and trying to murder them.
Meanwhile, Back In The
USSRUSA Trumps thugs are kidnapping people in broad daylight. You know who else made a habit of that? Your mates in the Checka, the SS, The Blackshirts.The deployment of unidentified federal officers is particularly dangerous in a situation like that in Portland and elsewhere in America, because it could easily lead to right-wing militias’ impersonating legal authorities and kidnapping citizens. As former CIA counterintelligence analyst Aki Peritz notes, “All it takes is one of these similar-kitted out militiamen groups to start grabbing folks off the street as well, but then having their way with them, for there to be huge, possibly violent pushback for these tactics. This hurts the police, and the citizenry.” Peritz argues, “We’re quickly entering secret police territory now. DHS is becoming Trump’s Mukhābarāt” (mukhābarāt being the Arabic word for intelligence agency, used colloquially to refer, for example, to the Egyptian or Iraqi or Libyan secret police).
(…)
Oregon Governor Kate Brown has been commendably blunt in attacking Trump’s assault on protesters. On Thursday, she tweeted:
The President is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government.
I told Acting Secretary Wolf that the federal government should remove all federal officers from our streets. His response showed me he is on a mission to provoke confrontation for political purposes. He is putting both Oregonians and local law enforcement officers in harm’s way.
The Fascist Coup has begun.
Unidentifiable by fiat.
CBP is Customs and Border Patrol – who don’t have jurisdiction over domestic protests. Do they? That’s not how any of this works is it? Deranged fascist presidents can’t just call in bombers and prison guards and heavy artillery and Border Patrol whenever they feel like staging a tantrum, can they?
If you have ever wondered what kind of people would willingly turn on their countrymen for position and power, now you know. It’s not just “good Germans.” Your children – in reading the history books – will be so ashamed they may have to change their names.
This is fascism. It is here. Now.
Why only downtown Portland?
Oh wait – that’s where the black-clad, mask-wearing pj boys of Fascist street gangs known as Antifa have been trashing shit every night for the last six weeks.
Personally I’d just pull every Federal department out of Portland. I’m sure the city doesn’t need the money.
It would be surrendering to the mob however and like that personal visit to the home of the Seattle mayor I’m sure Mayor Ted in Portland will soon change his tune when the Antifa Fascists pay his private home a visit. Right now he thinks he can use them against Trump.
05/30/2020
-Violent anarchists graffitied the BPA Building.
-Violent anarchists graffitied the Hatfield Courthouse.
-Violent anarchists graffitied the Edith Green-Wenell Wyatt Building.
-Violent anarchists graffitied the Terry Schrunk Plaza.
-Violent anarchists graffitied the 911 Federal Building.
-Violent anarchists graffitied the Pioneer Courthouse.
-Violent anarchists graffitied the Gus J. Solomon Courthouse.
06/01/2020
-Violent anarchists graffitied the Hatfield Courthouse.
-Violent anarchists graffitied Terry Schrunk Plaza.
-Violent anarchists graffitied The Pioneer Courthouse.
-Violent anarchists graffitied The Gus J Solomon Courthouse.
06/02/2020
-Violent anarchists graffitied the U.S. Custom House.
Gee whiz, crime is out of control, eh?
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf…
Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan…
Because Trump is relying on “Acting …” so he can fire at will, and so he can avoid confirmation hearings. The swamp is deepening everyday.
One last reply to your threadjacking and then that’s it.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
They’re his executive team and he can fire them at will whenever he wants for whatever reason whether confirmed by the Senate/House or not.
The reason they’re “acting” is that Pelosi and company refuse to do confirmations quickly or even at all as just another way of throwing sand in the gears. Just because Trump won an election is no reason why he should be allowed to enact his policies is the Democrat rule.
$23 million worth of damage is far more than just graffiti.
I’ll have plenty more on Portland in a post soon where you can dump all this stuff, and have already indulged your threadjacking enough.
Now back to the topic of Chicago.
Jesusonawaka, Tom boy, last time I looked Pelosi was Speaker of The House, and the responsibility for confirming presidential appointees rests with The Senate. Where the GOP holds the majority. You know, the same Senate that refused to confirm Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court as “it should be up to the incoming President”, 12 months before the elections. You can bet your sweet bippy if there is another vacancy before November the GOP will fall over itself to confirm any one, even a Ham Sandwich, just as long as it can get another authoritarian appointed.
Must be tiresome having to continually blame the Dems for the failings of the Rethugs.
I’m well aware that it is the Senate not the House that confirms such people, that’s why I said “and company” because you would have to be either naive or gaslighting to think that the most powerful Democrat – Pelosi – does not coordinate and plan with the Senate Democrats.
And the majority does not count in the face of Parliamentary tactics: