Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot pleaded with Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to send Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents to the city for six months after the city reaches a 25-year high in the number of murders.
The woke mayor announced at a news conference in Garfield Park on Monday that she made a formal request to Garland to send ATF agents to Chicago for six months, a well as more federal prosecutors and federal marshals to help get illegal guns off the streets.
This comes after the democrat proposed slashing $80 million from the Chicago Police Department budget in 2020 during ‘defund the police’ protests.
The proposal was later scaled back and 3.3% of the budget – or $59 million – was cut and Lightfoot has since denounced the ‘defund’ movement, but Chicago’s police union still issued a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the mayor earlier this year.
‘The federal government remains uniquely qualified to help address the scourge of gun violence,’ Lightfoot said on Monday. ‘We need these additional resources well in advance of next summer.’
Chicago is currently fighting a 25-year high murder rate, with 767 homicides occurring within the city so far this year.
It is also seeing a 7.5 percent increase in violent crime this year when compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to an analysis from Axios, with some parts of the city seeing double the number of fatal shootings.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Attorney General’s office for comment.
But in a statement to ABC 7, Garland said his office has not yet received her request, but noted: ‘We share the concerns about the tragic violence in our community.’
Chicago has recorded 767 murders in 2021 so far – the highest number in 25 years
Chicago is also seeing a 7.5 percent increase in violent crime this year when compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, with some parts of the city seeing double the number of fatal shootings. Overall, crime rates are slightly lower than in 2017
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced on Monday she is asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to send ATF agents to Chicago for six months, a well as more federal prosecutors and federal marshals to get illegal guns off the streets
Lightfoot, a Democrat, blamed the rise in crime on gang violence – caused by poverty and neglect – and too many illegal guns on the streets.
‘I know people are scared,’ the mayor told residents at the news conference, noting: ‘I want to ensure you that from Day One public safety has been and will be my top priority.
‘I have and I will commit every bit of law enforcement muscle to fighting this fight, but I so know that lasting peace and safety will only come to this city when the underlying causes of violence and crime are addressed once and for all.
‘There are no quick solutions to the problems we are facing,’ she continued, but said: ‘We must do better immediately and in the short term to take back control from the criminals who are preying upon us and making all of us less safe.’
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She said her goal is to ‘proactively and relentlessly bring peace to our city once and for all,’ noting that she has brought back the Chicago Police Department’s dedicated gun teams, and added more homicide detectives.
Lightfoot also said she has invested in programs to reduce crime, and touted her budget’s Our City, Our Safety violence reduction plan.
But the mayor also slammed the Cook County court system, calling for a moratorium on violent offenders being allowed out on electronic monitoring.
Lightfoot said the practice is a ‘slap in the face’ to the criminal’s victims, and said that in many cases the offenders are released with ‘virtually no supervision.’
She called the system ‘fundamentally broken,’ and asked: ‘How many more have to die before there is an end to this dangerous practice of letting violent, dangerous criminals out into the very communities in which they are alleged to have caused harm, often without meaningful supervision, or in the absence of any meaningful intervention.’
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents are seen here investigating the scene of a shooting in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago last year
So far this year, 767 Chicago residents have been murdered – more than any year since 1996, when murders totaled 796 at the end of a crime wave fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic.
At the same time, shooting incidents 9 percent over last year and 68 percent since 2019, with sexual assault incidents up 28 percent from last year and thefts up 20 percent, according to Chicago Police Department data.
In total, Axios reports, violent crime is up 7.5 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels from 2019 and some neighborhoods of the city have seen a 100 percent increase in fatal shootings this year.
The mayor has previously announced a ‘refund the police’ budget last – a U-turn from Lightfoot’s proposal last year which slashed $59 million from the CPD budget, or 3.3 percent, and 600 vacant positions from the department, amid Black Lives Matter protests throughout the summer of 2020.
The city’s 2021 – 2022 budget will now pump $41 million more into the mayor’s Our City, Our Safety violence reduction plan, which focuses on 15 of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods.
Of that, Axios reports, $8.5 million would go to violence reduction programs and $62 million will go to affordable housing.
Following her press conference on Monday, both law enforcement and people on the left criticized the mayor’s plan.
‘There are so many different organizations in [the] city of Chicago that are doing great work,’ community organizer William Calloway told ABC 7, ‘but if we’re going to get federal resources it should fund those operations, not add more law enforcement on the street. That’s crazy.’
Several police aldermen also criticized Lightfoot’s plan, with Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins telling ABC 7 he thought it was ‘light on specifics for an action plan, for what we’re going to do about the ongoing crisis and street crime, gang-elated violence, gang-related shootings, carjackings and armed robbery.’
And Fifteen Ward Alderman Rap Lopez said: ‘For me, what I find most disappointing is that the mayor did a lot of asking, but not a lot of leading.’
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