This was the first long holiday weekend for Chicago’s new police superintendent, David Brown, who has been on the job a little over a month. On Friday, he said his officers would be visible in every neighborhood to try to contain what is traditionally a violent three days.
The shooting began within hours after he spoke and did not let up: Two people killed and six people wounded Friday afternoon through early Saturday; six people killed and 10 people wounded Saturday evening through early Sunday; one person killed and 13 people wounded Sunday afternoon through early Monday; and 12 people shot Monday into early Tuesday, one of them fatally. One man accidentally shot himself Monday afternoon.
I’m sure the police are going to say sending a dozen officers to the site of a block party didn’t interfere with their patrols in violent neighborhoods. Maybe so. But the raid on a party, not because there were drugs present or shootings happening, but because the partiers weren’t standing 6 feet apart, calls into question the sanity of whoever is in charge.
But the weekend shootings were upstaged by a scuffle between police officers and a large gathering on the South Side Sunday night that was caught on video and caught the attention of everyone from Chance the Rapper to Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Officers were called to the 7000 block of South Lowe Avenue in the Englewood neighborhood to disperse a crowd that had gathered on the street. The video shows a chaotic scene as officers struggled to break up the crowd, grabbing some of the people and chasing off others.
What are they going to do? Put the social distance scofflaws in jail? So the city is going to put them in a place where they’re far more likely to contract COVID-19 than outdoors at a party?
I guess it’s sort of like the boiling frog analogy. Things are getting crazier and crazier, but city leaders aren’t noticing because it’s happening gradually. It doesn’t seem so crazy to send cops after kids at a party while the dead and wounded are piling up if you’ve slowly been going insane for a while.