Thread: Chicago War Zone

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

( It is only Sunday morning ... let's see how the weekend rounds out. Full moon, Summer soltiste, Father's Day with large family gatherings.... )

Chicago records 300th homicide with 13 over Father's Day weekend
Chicago Tribune 8 hrs ago

CHICAGO — Chicago recorded its 300th homicide this weekend and tallied six others over a 60-hour period that saw 55 people shot, 13 fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Monday morning.

So far this year, close to 1,800 people have been shot across the city and more than 200 of those wounded have died from their wounds, according to records kept by the Chicago Tribune. A total of 306 people have been killed this year, by shooting, stabbing or other means.

A 3-year-old boy was among the wounded who survived the weekend shootings. Police said he’s in critical condition. The 3-year-old was shot in the right shoulder near East 61st Street and South Kimbark Avenue in the Woodlawn neighborhood at 6:15 p.m. Sunday, police said. The boy was in a car seat when an unknown attacker fired shots at the car, police said. People in the vehicle managed to get the boy to University of Chicago Medical Center. He was then transferred to Comer Children’s Hospital in critical condition.

Five people were fatally shot and nine others were hurt between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Four of the fatalities occurred in seven hours. The fatalities included a 16-year-old boy who was killed in West Englewood about 9:05 p.m. Friday. He was in the front passenger seat of a car driving through an alley in the 6500 block of South Hamilton Avenue when two males came up and fired shots, according to police.

At least 28 people were wounded, three fatally, in shootings from 8:30 a.m. Saturday to 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the equivalent of somebody shot every 43 minutes. One fatal shooting occurred during a possible murder-suicide in Hyde Park about 9:50 a.m. Saturday, police said. Police responded to the 1400 block of East 54th Street for a well-being check and found a 65-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to the head. A man, 73, also was found shot in the head.

Five more people were killed and seven others, including the 3-year-old boy, were wounded from Sunday afternoon to early Monday. One of the fatalities Sunday was a 21-year-old man shot with “possibly an AK-47” assault rifle in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, according to police. Police initially said the victim was 17. The 21-year-old, who the Cook County medical examiner’s office said was Salvador Suarez, was walking east in the 1700 block of West 46th Street around 1:30 p.m. when a light-colored, four-door Saturn pulled up and fired shots with a “high-powered semi-automatic weapon,” striking the victim as he attempted to run, said Eugene Roy, chief of detectives for the Chicago police.

Suarez lived in the 4500 block of South Hermitage Avenue, according to the medical examiner’s office. Police are investigating whether the rifle has been used in any other shootings. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene, and the shooting was believed to be gang related, Roy said.

A Chicago police officer also shot and wounded a male who allegedly pointed gun at him near Humboldt Park on Sunday evening. The male suspect, whose age was not immediately available, was shot in the lower extremities, and he was listed in serious-but-stable condition at Stroger Hospital.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/...Ahl6Cv?ocid=sf

7 Dead, 46 Shot in Chicago Over the Weekend via Shootings
John S. Roberts
02:28pm June 26, 2016

Why is it that liberals won’t acknowledge all the gun violence that takes place in Chicago, where gun laws are strict?

Every weekend we see horror stories from the Windy City (which is run by Democrats), but only conservative websites report on the crime.

Could it be that most of the violence is happening between minorities and progressives don’t want to go near it for some reason?

Heh. It’s almost like Democrats don’t care about blacks.

From NBC Chicago:

Seven people were killed and at least 39 more — including a pregnant woman — have been wounded in gun violence across the city since late Friday afternoon, according to Chicago Police.

The most recent fatal attack happened in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side.

Officers responding to a call of shots fired at 5:08 a.m. in the 900 block of North Massasoit found a man unresponsive in the driver seat of a car with a gunshot wound to the chest, according to Chicago Police. He was dead at the scene, according to police, who said his age and identity were unknown Sunday morning.

Earlier Sunday, emergency crews responded at 4:27 a.m. to the shooting near 72nd Street and South Chicago Avenue, where the man had been shot in the chest, police said. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead. Additional details were not immediately available.

About 1:30 a.m., a 55-year-old man was killed in an East Garfield Park neighborhood shooting that left two women wounded. He was shot twice in the chest and one woman, 35, was shot in the leg in the 700 block of North Ridgeway, police said. The man was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he later died, police said. The woman’s condition was stabilized at Stroger Hospital. Another woman, 19, later showed up at a hospital with an ankle wound and was listed in good condition.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office did not immediately confirm those deaths

At least 33 more people have been wounded in shootings since Friday evening.

http://www.youngcons.com/just-in-7-d...via-shootings/

10 shootings a day: Complex causes of Chicago's spiking violence
Chicago Tribune ~ 1 day ago

To understand Chicago's violence, start at Kostner Avenue and Monroe Street and walk west up a one-way stretch of graystones and brick two-flats. There on a boarded-up front door you'll see the red stain of gang graffiti. On the cracked sidewalk below lies an empty heroin baggie. Hardened young men sit on a porch.

This single block on the West Side -- part of the Harrison police district -- has been the scene of at least six shootings so far this year. A masked gunman shot a teen in the stomach. A father delivering groceries to his daughter was shot before he could escape gunfire. And just last week, police again unspooled the yellow crime scene tape in the alley behind the block after a teen was fatally shot in the head.

As Chicago heads into the often violent July Fourth weekend, these kinds of stories are all too common in pockets of the West and South sides. At the halfway point of the year, homicides have jumped by 49 percent citywide to 312 through Tuesday, reaching levels unseen since the late 1990s. Shooting incidents have risen by even more, marking the third consecutive year of double-digit increases.

While it doesn't rank as the nation's murder capital on a per-capita basis, Chicago is the runaway leader in the sheer volume of killings and shootings. New York and Los Angeles don't even come close. Through June 19, Chicago had more homicides than those two larger cities combined, records show. The two combined had fewer than 1,000 shooting victims during that same period, while Chicago by Tuesday topped 1,900 -- about 10 a day.

A closer look at the numbers shows the intractable hold that violence has in some of Chicago's 22 police districts. Two of the city's historically most violent police districts -- Harrison and Englewood -- account for fully one-fourth of the homicides and shooting incidents.

A complex mix of factors is driving the violence. But much of the bloodshed can be linked to gang conflict over everything from petty disputes to control of drug dealing, as well as the splintering of gangs into smaller cliques fighting over a few blocks at a time and easy access to guns, experts say.

Yet there are deeper societal problems at play as well, including long histories of poverty, joblessness, segregation and neglect in these crime-ridden neighborhoods.

The increased violence comes as the Police Department confronts an unprecedented crisis that has Chicago cops under the harshest light. The U.S. Justice Department is leading a wide-ranging probe of police practices in the wake of a video showing a white officer shooting black teen Laquan McDonald 16 times. The department also was forced into revamping its street stop procedures after the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois raised red flags over whether officers were violating citizens' civil rights.

All this has led many officers to feel unsure about stopping anyone. Just this week, the president of the police union said many officers feel that "no one has their backs." Other veteran officers agree that Chicago cops are dispirited and have slowed down on the kind of proactive policing that can remove a gun or criminal from the street.

The Tribune will be chronicling these issues in a series of stories over the coming summer months -- traditionally the peak of the violence.

Gang conflict: 'Runnin' from God'

At 10:30 a.m. last Saturday it was already steamy as the Rev. Marshall Hatch and about six other members of his New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church walked from their majestic edifice in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. One carried a life-sized wooden cross on his shoulder as the group set out to offer prayer.

As the group wound its way to Monroe and Kostner, the site of the six shootings this year, a young boy buzzed by on a bicycle to find out what they were doing. Neighbors gathered on front steps and side yards. A barbecue was already smoking, and Hatch made his way over to say hello.

Hatch, who has worked on the West Side for some 30 years, took a break at a shady spot to talk about the complex problems faced by the neighborhood. As he spoke, a group of young men, as if cued by a movie director, crossed Monroe and streamed toward a home in the middle of the block.

Hatch turned to watch. He sighed.

"Well, you know, it's painful because its hard to imagine that they are up to anything positive," he said. "Because everything else in the neighborhood is so negative."

Unbowed, Hatch walked to the home a few minutes later and passed his business card across the wrought iron fence. The men responded with hard, vacant looks. No eye contact. Then they peeled off, one by one.

"You runnin' from God," a woman in front of the house told the young men.

The makeup of Chicago's gangs has changed dramatically over the years. They once were massive organizations with powerful leaders and hundreds of members who controlled large chunks of territory. Now small cliques battle for control over a few blocks.

Veteran officers say the fractured nature of gangs has made life more chaotic on the street, with rivals sometimes living just a few blocks apart.

Hatch thinks much of the violence involves retaliatory shootings stemming from so many homicides going unsolved, while police complain of too few witnesses willing to cooperate. "That means you've got a lot of vigilantism going on out there," he said. "They think they have to get (justice) on their own."

On the West Side, on a street like Monroe that is minutes from the Eisenhower Expressway, nicknamed the "Heroin Highway" for its easy access for drug-buying suburbanites, fights for the lucrative drug spots are fueling much of the violence.

Asked what's behind all the shootings, a resident near the troubled 4400 block of West Monroe said, "Whoever's dealing the drugs."

On the other hand, shootings by gangs on the South Side tend to be more over controlling turf or seeking retribution, according to police and former gang members. "South Side is about gangbanging," said one former gang member who lives near the Monroe block. "West Side is about money."

Experts also agree that personal disputes increasingly are playing a role in the violence. One veteran cop recalled with disbelief recently how a slaying he investigated boiled down to an insult over shoes.

Police also said so-called net-banging on social media fuels conflicts. Gang members have been known to post menacing videos on YouTube, showing them furtively entering rival territory, waving guns and issuing threats.

Guns: Tools of the trade

The third watch in the Harrison District was busy for a Tuesday evening in May, surprising even veteran officers. By the end of the approximately eight-hour shift, at least nine guns had been taken off the street.

The seizures reflect a persistent problem for Chicago: the proliferation of handguns. Through Tuesday, police had recovered 4,300 guns from across the city, up 30 percent from a year earlier. Gun-related arrests have risen as well, to 1,530, the department said.

Gun pipelines are plentiful for gang members, many of whom cannot legally buy firearms because of their criminal records. Gun shows and dealers operating under less stringent laws are a short drive away in northwest Indiana. Gang members also turn to legal buyers to purchase weapons for them at suburban Cook County and downstate gun shops -- an illegal practice known as straw purchasing. Guns also are stolen in burglaries.

Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, who has studied gun issues, said gun seizure records suggest gang members in New York and Los Angeles carry fewer illegal firearms than those in Chicago. "Unfortunately for Chicago, that has the tragic consequence of higher homicide rates and higher rates of shootings," Ander said.

That night in May in the Harrison District, the seizures began about 4 p.m. when two men in their 30s were arrested after officers saw them firing at each other near Troy Street and Jackson Boulevard. Officers confiscated a two-tone gray and black Smith & Wesson 9 mm and a Springfield .45-caliber.

In the next three hours, three more guns would be recovered -- including one hidden under a vehicle passenger seat and another tucked into the pocket of a hoodie. Ranking officers say reports from the field indicate more gang members are being caught carrying guns than in the past, a troubling trend that could explain in part the surge in shootings.

Like his predecessors, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is pushing for tougher gun laws. In a telephone interview Wednesday, Johnson said repeat gun offenders are driving much of the violence, emboldened by the knowledge that there won't be serious consequences for their actions. "Until they get the message ... that our judicial system is serious about holding them accountable, they're going to continue," he told the Tribune.

Poverty: 'Communities dumped on'

Johnson said poverty and economic disparity also play a part in fueling the violence in underprivileged areas, including the Harrison District. "If you show me people without hope, I'll show you people that's willing to pick up a gun and do something with it," he said.

The Harrison District has been among the city's most violent for years and remains so. From the beginning of the year through Sunday, the West Side district led the city with 232 shooting incidents and was a close second with 38 homicides, both more than double a year earlier.

The communities in the West Side district have long struggled under the weight of low employment and poverty. Past census data show that far more households in the West Garfield Park neighborhood fell below the poverty level than the citywide average and that its unemployment rate was at times as high as 25 percent.

When Chicago Public Schools closed nearly 50 schools in the summer of 2013 because of underenrollment, three were in this lone West Side neighborhood. "These communities are dumped on in a lot of ways," Hatch said. "... It's not just closing schools. It's the disinvestment, the sense of desolation. Who wants to live next door to a boarded-up school?"

Other areas are experiencing sharp increases in violence as well. Through Sunday, the Englewood District on the South Side led the city in homicides with 39, the Austin District on the West Side had seen a 142 percent increase in shooting incidents and homicides had risen 145 percent in the Deering District on the Southwest Side.

These communities share similar socio-economic struggles and entrenched gang problems.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Police Accountability Task Force, created in the fallout over the court-ordered release of the McDonald shooting video, concluded in its recent report that Chicago's segregation has "isolated" many black communities. It also linked failing social systems to pernicious crime, citing an "alarming lack of jobs as well as a dearth of basic community services and anchors like decent schools, day care, churches, community centers, parks or grocery stores."

"These same neighborhoods are ravaged by violent crime," said the report, citing the Austin, North Lawndale, Englewood and Roseland neighborhoods.

For many, the lure of a gang and the quick cash of its illicit drug market are too powerful to resist given the economic realities.

While the gangs drive violence, failing social systems thwart any chance for meaningful change, said Andrew Papachristos, a Yale University sociologist who has studied the city's crime patterns, particularly in the Harrison District. "You don't see the long-term investment," he said. "When police come out and take out a drug corner or go after a certain drug operation, what investment has been made on the other side to stop the next generation from coming up?"


Police: Going fetal?

The troubling video of Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old McDonald has created a firestorm for the Police Department, touching off weeks of protest, the firing of Superintendent Garry McCarthy and the in-depth Justice Department probe of police practices.

Morale plummeted as officers expressed concern about their every move being captured on smartphone video, a Tribune story reported earlier this year. Some have suggested that officers became hesitant to make street stops and arrests for fear of backlash.

In a speech Tuesday, Dean Angelo Sr., president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said street stops had plunged by 150,000 so far this year, but he blamed the more extensive paperwork that officers must fill out this year for every street stop, not the so-called Ferguson effect -- a reference to a slowdown by police nationwide because of increased scrutiny after a fatal police shooting in Ferguson, Mo. Even before the McDonald video was released, Emanuel had said officers in Chicago and across the country had gone "fetal" to avoid being the next viral video.

Superintendent Johnson told the Tribune he thinks officers were simply confused earlier in the year about how to fill out the street stop forms, and savvy criminals noticed that cops weren't being as proactive on the street. "And if I'm a criminal, and I'm a good criminal, I'm going to take advantage of the situation," he said.

Another veteran cop said the forms are so complicated that they take as long as an hour to fill out, keeping officers from street duty and leading many to reconsider whether a stop is worth the effort. It's affected the department's ability to gather intelligence on gangs, he believes. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so by the department.

The ACLU has disputed the notion that fewer street stops contribute to spikes in violence. The group has maintained that the way Chicago police have stopped residents was unconstitutional and needed to be fixed to protect the public.

While it might seem logical that inaction by police will lead to increased violence, criminologists caution against a rush to judgment. Instead, they argue that violence typically persists in communities in which relations between police and residents are frayed because of lack of trust and communication. "When communities lose confidence in the police to protect them and to serve their interests effectively, community members often will take matters into their own hands and settle disputes violently," said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. "I think that's what you are seeing playing out on the streets of Chicago right now."

Emanuel's task force on policing also zeroed in on the lack of trust between police and communities of color as one of the significant issues facing the Police Department. It found that the department's flagship effort to build trust -- the decades-old Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy -- had been "significantly damaged after years of neglect."

On numerous occasions since taking office in March, Johnson has acknowledged the department's breakdown in trust with the community. "Community relationships with CPD are so important," he said Wednesday. "And that's why it's so important for us to re-establish trust and gain trust where we didn't have it before."

'In the blink of an eye'

Herbert Lee can remember a few fleeting images as he was parking his Chevy Monte Carlo last February in the 4400 block of West Monroe.

Three people standing outside a building. Another crossing the street. A passing car. Then boom. "When I heard the gunshots, I just immediately took off," Lee said last weekend as he sat in his mother-in-law's West Side apartment. "I was trying to get off the block because I didn't know where the shots was coming, where they were directed toward."

He got a about a block away before another round of shots shattered his windshield and a bullet hit him in his face. A bulge is noticeable on the right side of Lee's neck, where he said the bullet is still lodged. Almost five months later, he is still shaken. "I'm used to the violence. I'm used to hearing gunshots. I'm used to seeing victims. But I'm not used to being shot," he said. "In the blink of an eye, I could have been gone."

More recently, on May 23, a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot near the alley behind the Monroe block.

Minutes after the shooting, a group of teens and young men lingered as police worked the scene.

"Don't ask me (expletive)," one man said to a reporter.

"Move it along," another said.

Farther down Monroe, a woman and her nephew sat smoking in the dark on their front porch behind a wrought iron fence that has been nicked by bullets in the past. "We're concerned," said the 27-year-old nephew, an electrician. "I feel there's nothing we can do about it."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/...d=ansmsnnews11

60 shot in Chicago…

Written by Michele Hickford, Editor-in-Chief on July 5, 2016

It is with a very heavy heart we must once again report on a violent and deadly holiday weekend in the city of Chicago.

Perhaps those who live on the mean streets of Chicago simply need a little more love and compassion. They certainly need something, because this has been happening with awful regularity.

The Chicago Tribune reports, Thirty-two people were shot in 15 hours between about noon on Monday and 3 a.m. on Tuesday to end the July 4th weekend, doubling the total number of gunshot victims from the three previous nights, according to police.

The attacks raised the number of people shot in the city over the Fourth of July weekend to at least 60, according to data collected by the Tribune. Among those, four people were fatally shot over the weekend holiday.



Of the 60 shot over the weekend, 28 were wounded between about noon Sunday and 3 a.m. Monday morning.

At least three of the victims were children under the age of 10. But the answer isn’t simply more gun control because a fifth person killed over the weekend was stabbed to death in a “domestic-related” incident.

Still, one can be grateful this long holiday wasn’t as bad as Memorial Day weekend when six people were killed and 63 were shot.

But don’t worry. Democrats will fix this problem among their inner city urban constituents. In fact, the Congressional Black Caucus is planning to “disrupt” the House floor as much as possible this week to build on the “success” of their previous sit-in. Glad we’ve got elected officials who really know how to tackle the big issues.


http://www.allenbwest.com/michele/br...hot-in-chicago

July 20, 2016 
33 Shot In One Day In Chicago Is New Record

With 55 shootings and five deaths, the weekend in Chicago was particularly bloody, so much so that Sunday marked itself as having the most shootings in a single day in over a year.

Sunday that brought out the worst gunfire, with a whopping 33 shootings and five more deaths.

The bloody weekend raises the odious totals to 2,218 citizens shot this year thus far, with 330 shot and killed.

http://lawofficer.com/2016/07/33-sho...is-new-record/

9 shot, 3 dead in 24 hours in Cincinnati

Patrick Brennan and Cameron Knight, cknight@enquirer.com 7:30 p.m. EDT July 23, 2016

Since 10 p.m. Friday night, nine people have been shot in the city of Cincinnati. Three of those victims died, police confirmed.

"The Cincinnati Police Department is doing everything possible to investigate and address these violent acts," Lt. Steve Saunders said Saturday. "But we need the cooperation of the community to identify whoever is involved. We need people to come forward and call Crime Stoppers. It's difficult for us to investigate these serious incidents without information."

As of July 16, police reported that the total number of shooting victims in 2016 was down 13 percent from last year and homicides were down 17 percent, according to the Strategic and Tactical Analytic Review for Solutions report published by CPD.

North Fairmount: 2 injured

At least two men were shot late Friday night in the area of Beekman and Cummins streets. Police report they believe the two incidents were not connected.

Lt. Tim Brown said one victim was located in North Fairmount, and a second victim was found at Mercy West Hospital at approximately 10:30 p.m.

Police received reports of a third person shot, but could not locate a third victim, Brown said.

A silver car with damage to a rear corner and a tire was taped off and investigated in the 2700 block of Beekman Street. The road was closed for more than an hour.

Brown said no suspect information is available and that the victims were not cooperating with investigators.

Millvale: 2 killed, 2 injured

About a mile north of the shooting in North Fairmount, three men and one woman were shot early Saturday in Millvale in an incident that left two people dead, according to Cincinnati police.

Bobbie Odneal III, 23, was found dead on the sidewalk in the 3400 block of Beekman Street, police reported. Rickey McGowan, 25, was found wounded inside a building and died from his wounds at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

The other two victims were treated at UCMC and are expected to survive.

The intersection of Millvale and Beekman was closed for several hours and later reopened, but homicide detectives confirmed the investigation is ongoing.

West End: 1 killed

A man was killed in the courtyard of the Stanley Rowe Community apartments Saturday on Lockhurst Lane near Liberty Street, police said.

She-ar Dornal, 18, was fatally shot just before 3 p.m. and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to press release from the homicide unit.

A woman rushed up to the police tape and screamed, "That's my brother" as police held her back from the crime scene. Another man was tackled by police after running past the tape to the body.

Police said a suspect fled toward a nearby basketball court, but no arrests have been reported in connection with the homicide.

Avondale: 1 injured

A man was shot in the 800 block of Lexington Avenue at approximately 3 p.m. Saturday, police said.

Saunders said the man was in surgery at 5 p.m. and his condition was unknown.

No suspect information has been released regarding the incident. The identity of the victim

Over-the-Rhine: 1 injured

A 36-year-old man was shot in Over-the-Rhine near the corner of McMicken Avenue and Vine Street just after 4 p.m. Saturday, police reported.

The victim was struck once in the torso, and was taken to UCMC for treatment, officials said. His condition is unknown.

Investigators are searching for a 19-year-old man in connection with the shooting. A purple, hooded sweatshirt police believe belongs to the suspect was recovered near the scene.
http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news...ting/87473300/