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Chicago braces for rise in gun violence amid summer heat
CHICAGO, Aug 2, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Chicago police and residents are bracing for an increase in shootings in America’s third-largest city, where the violence never takes a day off and rises as summer temperatures soar.
With a major music festival set to begin this weekend during the warmest part of the year, some wonder if the demands on police to protect the event will leave problem areas elsewhere wide open for shooters.
Sixty-six people were shot — 12 of them fatally — in Chicago during the first weekend of August last year, and city authorities recorded 565 “criminal homicides” in 2018, almost all involving guns.
“The reality is that nobody is safe. Nobody is off limits. There is no ‘off-limits’. The line is gone,” said Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest and social activist.
“Years ago, you didn’t do anything at churches or synagogues or mosques, you didn’t do anything at somebody’s home or their family, especially mothers, and then especially children,” he said.
Last weekend, 48 people were shot and eight killed, including two mothers who volunteered to campaign against violence. On Monday, six more were shot, and another 11 the following day.
For many in Chicago, a bustling Midwestern city of 2.7 million on the shores of Lake Michigan, these incidents are so common that they hardly merit a shrug.
But the murder of the Mothers Against Senseless Killings activists — Chantell Grant, 26, and 35-year-old Andrea Stoudemire — sparked outrage.
– ‘Hyper-segregated cities’ –
The pair were in the far South Side of Chicago Sunday night, on a corner where members of their group have maintained a summer-long vigil since 2015 in an attempt to halt shootings.
Chicago police say a blue SUV drove up and an occupant opened fire, hitting Grant and Stoudemire several times in their chests, as well as shooting a 30-year-old man, who is expected to recover.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the murders “horrifying” but urged citizens to “push forward.”
While cities such as New York and Washington have largely been able to shed their reputations for deadly violence, Chicago — once home to notorious prohibition-era gangster Al Capone — has been unable to do likewise.
Alex Kotlowitz, an American journalist who has written extensively about violence in Chicago, said the city “gets all this attention in large part because of its size,” but that others such as Detroit and Baltimore also have major problems.
“The thing that all these places have in common is that they are deeply, hyper-segregated cities, cities where persons of color live and are physically and spiritually isolated from the rest of the metropolis,” Kotlowitz said.
– ‘Love affair with guns’ –
For Pfleger, Chicago’s poor homicide clearance rate — 15.4 percent for the first six months of 2018, according to USA Today — doesn’t inspire confidence in the battle against gun violence.
“I don’t think we are going to see any kind of slow down until two things happen,” he said.
“Number one, that we see people are arrested and put in prison. We have a huge amount of unsolved cases and to me, the biggest deterrent of somebody shooting or killing is knowing you’re going to prison, but the belief on the street is that most likely you’re not going to get caught.
“Then, the second thing is this love affair with guns in this country. That’s the first thing we do now. Guns are the first line of contact and how we express being upset.”
Starting Thursday, Chicago hosts Lollapalooza, the annual four-day music festival that more than 100,000 people attend each day.
In light of last week’s deadly mass shooting at a California food festival, Lightfoot promised a “robust” security plan.
Chicago police said no resources from any of its 22 districts will be depleted because of the festival.
To that, Pfleger said: “You have to wonder what will happen in the neighborhoods.”
He added that after 30 years of marches, protests, and raising reward money to solve crimes, the unrelenting violence takes its toll.
“It’s disheartening, to say the least.” he said. “But the alternative of giving up is not an alternative.”
BSS/AFP/AU/07:50 hrs