A “heartbroken” Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday declared “there will be consequences” for those responsible for “wreaking havoc on my streets” over the long holiday weekend.
It was a change in tone and focus for Johnson, who has in the past often emphasized the need for youth programs or other social spending to get at the root causes of crime.
“We are here to say emphatically that this is enough. It’s enough. When this reckless violence ravages across our city at this magnitude, we are losing a piece of the soul of Chicago. It deeply pains me to admit that, but it is true,” Johnson told reporters at public safety headquarters, flanked by Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling and other officials.
“But I will not stand idly by. We will not be passive in this moment,” he added. “We need to ensure that we are holding every single individual accountable for the pain and trauma and the torment that they have caused in this city. There will be consequences for the violence. We will not let criminal activity ruin and harm our city.”
More than 100 people were wounded in shootings citywide over the four-day holiday weekend, and at least 19 of those shooting victims had died as of Monday morning. The mayor said those victims “are not just numbers on pages” but “our fellow Chicagoans” whose lives were lost or upended.
And while the mayor also struck his familiar theme about reversing “generations of disinvestment and deep disenfranchisement in the exact communities where so much of the violence has taken place,” he didn’t stop there.
There were no excuses for the perpetrators — not after a mass shooting in Greater Grand Crossing killed an 8-year-old boy and two women and wounded two other children. That was one of four mass shootings over the holiday weekend.
‘We have had enough of it’
The mayor was out of town Thursday evening, but he joined Snelling Friday to canvass the block where the Greater Grand Crossing attack occurred.
Those shooters made “a choice to kill women, a choice to kill children, a choice to kill the elderly,” Johnson said. “And I’m here to say emphatically that we have had enough of it.”
The mayor pleaded for help from other officials and has asked federal authorities “to respond to the mass shootings in the city of Chicago … just like they do in other places in this country.”
As of Monday morning, there had been no arrests in any of the weekend’s fatal shootings. Snelling did not provide updates on any investigations but said detectives were “working really hard on these cases, especially these ones that are involving children.”
Snelling, like Johnson, called for aggressive action against those involved in these attacks.
“We have to really stop and think about the mindset of someone who will shoot a child, a helpless child, and unarmed mother, and think that that’s OK and go about their days,” Snelling said. “Those people have to be taken off the street. They have to be put away.”
10 shootings in mayor’s neighborhood
Ten shootings were in the Austin police district on the West Side, where Johnson lives. He acknowledged hearing at least some of those gunshots.
“It is personal,” Johnson said.
“We’ve got to hold people accountable. But you know what my ultimate goal is? It’s to transform this city so we cut off the pipeline of boys between the ages of 10 and 19 being either victims or the perpetrators” of violence, he added.
A former Chicago Public Schools teacher, Johnson said one thing about Chicago never will change: “Somebody always knows something about somebody” responsible for committing violent crime.
“It is a matter of life and death. Step up. Say something. In fact, if you know that there are wayward youth who have lost their way, snatch ‘em up. We have opportunities for them,” the mayor said.
“I’m so sick and tired of losing Black boys to violence in this city. It grieves me fiercely. I’ve got a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old. ... I never want to experience the pain of having to bury one — and no one should either.”
He recalled an earlier shooting in which he and his wife fell to the floor and crawled to their children’s room as the kids screamed in terror.
“We’re just hoping we’re not the headline,” he recalled. “And it can’t be that way.”
Chicago police will open an emergency assistance center near the scene of a mass shooting that left eight people wounded over the weekend. The center will operate from 3:30 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Fosco Park, 1312 S. Racine Ave., for any Chicagoan who has been affected by gun violence.
Eyes on Chicago for Democratic convention
With the eyes of the world turning to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, Snelling said the police department has separate plans to secure the convention, respond to protests and handle neighborhood gun violence.
Snelling said recent demonstrations in Chicago haven’t resulted in violent clashes with protesters.
“We’ve had our dust-ups,” he said, “but nothing that made national news.”
Some officers are training specifically for large-scale protests and potential unrest, Snelling said. At the same time, department officials are creating a separate plan “to make sure that we’re not pulling resources that are necessary to keep our neighborhoods safe.”
His comments came after two violent weekends during which police resources were stretched thin by the annual Pride Parade and this weekend’s NASCAR races downtown. Some officers had days off canceled over both weekends, continuing a controversial practice Snelling has vowed to curtail.
On Monday, he said the number of canceled days off are down significantly under his watch.
“It’s not canceling days off just to cancel days off,” he said. “It’s to make sure that our officers have enough manpower out there to deal with the situation at hand and make sure that they keep down the violence.
“It keeps them safe, it keeps everyone around them safe, it keeps the city safe.”
With the convention just weeks away, Johnson also appealed to the state and federal governments for more crime-fighting help. The feds, he said, must stop the flow of illegal guns and provide more money for victim support, as well as what he called “boots on the ground,” such as violence interrupters.
“Remember the mass shooting that happened in Highland Park and all of the services that they got? That’s what we’re asking for. That’s all,” the mayor said. “What other suburban places get around the country when mass shootings happen like that, we’re just simply saying that Chicago deserves that as well.”
One such anti-violence group is CRED, run by Arne Duncan, the former CPS CEO who went on to head the Department of Education in the Obama administration.
Duncan called the weekend violence “horrific.” He said he spent Friday and Saturday nights at several shooting scenes and also visited a CRED worker who was hospitalized after being shot while mediating conflicts on the South Side.
“It is a shame to say that people can’t gather, can’t celebrate,” said Duncan. “I hate to say it, but I almost dread holidays now. They (the gatherings) feel great but they can go south in an instant.”
Over the four-day weekend, CRED hosted community gatherings— which ended before 10 p.m.— on the South and West sides with no violence. Duncan said peace agreements brokered by CRED between rival gang cliques were honored, but anti-violence workers citywide are able to reach fewer than one in five of the most at-risk residents of the city.
“We have to scale up as quickly as possible,” Duncan said. “The collective response to date has been wildly inadequate. We have to scale up what’s working… We are only in a couple of neighborhoods.”
Wrong weekend for NASCAR?
Given the violence that unfolded on the streets of Chicago during the holiday weekend, Johnson was asked whether it makes sense to have the NASCAR street race that same weekend next year — though the city’s contract with NASCAR locks that date in for at least one more year, with two option years after that.
“Those were dates that we inherited,” Johnson said. “We will continue to assess how this particular weekend for NASCAR … best benefits the people of Chicago.”
After last year’s debut race, Johnson renegotiated the contract he inherited to require NASCAR to pay the city $2 million to cover the cost of police overtime.
Snelling said he had “significantly less officers” detailed to the race, compared to last year.
“We recognized that we had a level of security around that event where we didn’t need as many officers, so we were able to scale that down this year. And we’ll continue to do that,” Snelling said, without offering specific numbers.
After an incredibly violent Thursday in the city, Snelling said he “looked at everything that occurred” on the Fourth of July, including the “hours and the time” of the crime wave.
“When we see this type of violence that occurs, we make adjustments on the fly.”
Contributing: Andy Grimm
