Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot cited the coronavirus pandemic as a factor contributing to a recent spike in shootings in her city.
When asked by CNN’s Omar Jiménez why shootings increased 40 percent over the past year and homicides increased more than 30 percent, Lighfoot said: “All these forces come together at the same time and make it very difficult. The public safety ecosystem that is not just law enforcement, but local, community based, they too have been hit hard by COVID and now they are just getting back online and on their feet. ”
The shootings killed 18 people in Chicago the last weekend in June, including two children and a teenager. During the weekend of July 4, more than 67 people were shot and at least 13 killed, including a 7-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy.
Lightfoot’s comments echoed those of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who blamed a surge in weekend-long violence on the coronavirus pandemic while defending the city’s police reforms and vowing to keep the New York City as “the safest big city in America”.
Shootings over the holiday weekend left at least eight dead and more than 44 wounded in the country’s largest city.
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“I want to talk about what happened this weekend. Many were celebrating, but we saw too much violence, and we have a lot of work to do to address it, “de Blasio said Monday, adding that” there is no single cause for something like this. “
“This is directly related to the coronavirus,” de Blasio said. “This is a very serious situation … As we get closer to an increasingly warmer climate, we feel the effects of people being locked up for months, the economy has not restarted, we have a real problem here.”
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De Blasio promised to “double down” to tackle the violence, which included shootings in Brooklyn, the Bronx and upper Manhattan. He noted that it would require “neighborhood police policing” and the cooperation of clergy and elected officials.
“This is all down to work,” de Blasio said, adding that the city “has received a very hard hand.”
“People are locked up … they don’t have the normal things to compromise their lives,” he explained. “But we are going to get over it. It will be difficult and it will take a lot of work. “
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President Trump reacted to the shootings in the two cities in a tweet on Sunday night.
“The crime numbers for Chicago and New York are way above. 67 people shot in Chicago, 13 died. The shootings skyrocketed significantly in New York, where people are demanding that @NYGovCuomo and @NYCMayor act now. Federal government ready, willing and able to help, if asked!
