Even the most cynical among us and this certainly includes most Chicago area residents who through the years have become somewhat immune to the daily violence totals, had to do a double-take at the headlines below.

I don’t write the headlines but actually to use the word “UPTICK” is being a tad misleading. The UPTICK has lasted since the very beginning of the year. We are at a point where we are talking about a month having the largest mass shooting spree in recent Chicago history. Each month the word UPTICK has been used to describe the violence from the month before and last year. The UPTICK has turned into a steady ongoing rolling blood bath on Chicago’s streets with no sign of letting up.  In just one month (JULY) 58 minors were shot. The headlines tell the gruesome details on a daily basis. Infants, toddlers, 7-8-9-year-olds, and hundreds of teens murdered or wounded.  So far in 2020 451 souls have been murdered and 2,326 have been shot in Chicago. 7 mass shootings in a one month period, including 15 people attacked and shot at just one incident, leaving even the most jaded shaking their heads.

This is no UPTICK.   Something is terribly wrong when more children are killed and wounded than are victims of the Coronavirus. I often get the question of what has gone wrong? The photo below probably needs no explaining. The photo on the right is in my opinion the direct cause of the photo on the left. Those figures would most likely be mistaken for a battle zone, not for a great American city. However, the reality is inescapable.

If you want to call an increase of 133% in murders and an 81% increase in shootings an UPTICK the City will pay your Kool-Aid tab. Those 498 folks who were wounded were targeted for death and no doubt will be listed in the statistics for another day. Today’s killers most often will be tomorrows or even the same day’s victims.  Chicago has over 117,000 gang members with 55 major gangs, with 747 factions or affiliates and over 2,500 subsets of those factions. We often hear that the police cannot solve the problem on their own. But yet it’s the police who are charged with the responsibility when the violence erupts. The failures of past politicians and their party minions, failed programs, failed schools, failed parenting and during these times, failed judicial systems, prosecutions, and scores of other failures that have spawned what we are dealing with today, are simply not held accountable. We are living in a time in Cook County where killers and gun offenders are afforded little or no bond and are constantly let lose to prey on entire neighborhoods. All in the name of so-called Restorative Justice. When they kill and maim, again and again, nobody is held accountable and the VICTIM list keeps escalating as one can see by those horrendous figures.

The ACLU threatened to sue the City back in August of 2015 because the police supposedly were guilty of profiling. Stop and Frisk became a thing of the past when the City buckled and ( it should be noted that every person involved in that agreement for the City is long gone) entered into an agreement with the ACLU, that for every street stop made by the police, it required a detailed report called an INVESTIGATORY STOP of approximately 40 minutes just to stop a person who was acting suspiciously in an alley, say at 2 am, or the occupants of a vehicle in an area of driveby shooting activity. By contrast Stop and Frisk which was granted to all law enforcement officers by the U.S.Supreme Court in Terry vs Ohio in 1968, took at the very least a few minutes to accomplish. Street stops are the number one weapon used by cops to combat violence.   Immediately after the City entered into that agreement those stops plummeted by 81%. Crime has in my opinion been out of control ever since. The photo below says it all.

During the Coronavirus Pandemic, every single day the mayor and the governor held press conferences and laid out detailed plans to keep people safe and secure from getting sick or dying. Some of the most restrictive enforcement was put in place. Social distancing, stay at home orders and closures were instituted to save lives. The Mayor of Chicago closed beaches, jogging trails, parks, and placed many more impositions, all in the name of safety. Yet we see the horrible results of out of control violence that’s killing and maiming Chicagoans by the hundreds and there seem to be no plans whatsoever that are not an old trot out to appease the press and the great clueless. The Governor of Illinois as far as I know has not even mentioned Chicago’s other epidemic, which is proving just as lethal for some as the Virus.  Looking at the indifference that Chicago leaders have towards solving this ongoing slaughter I cannot help to think of this quote, ” THE WORLD WILL NOT BE DESTROYED BY THOSE WHO DO EVIL BUT BY THOSE WHO WATCH THEM AND DO NOTHING.”  Why are Chicago’s leaders watching evil attack and doing nothing?