Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he inherited “systems of failure” after violence erupted during the Juneteenth holiday, with 75 people shot and 13 killed over the long weekend, according to preliminary data from the Chicago Police Department.
(Bloomberg) — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he inherited “systems of failure” after violence erupted during the Juneteenth holiday, with 75 people shot and 13 killed over the long weekend, according to preliminary data from the Chicago Police Department.
The violence included a mass shooting in the southwest suburb of Willowbrook and a shooting incident near the Lincoln Park Zoo, a wealthy area of the city.
“I knew what I was inheriting when I became the Mayor of the city of Chicago,” Johnson said at a press conference on Monday. “Here is what we have to remind ourselves. If we are going to get ourselves out of this rut, it’s going to take all of us.”
The Juneteenth holiday, a day to commemorate the end of slavery in the US, was marred by a wave of gun violence that swept across the country. Several incidents were also reported in San Diego, California, Flint, Michigan and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
America’s third-largest city though has been struggling to deal with rising crime since the pandemic, with the failure causing voters to eject former Mayor Lori Lightfoot from office earlier this year. She became the first Chicago mayor to lose re-election since 1983.
More than 800 people were killed in Chicago in 2021, the highest since the mid-1990s, police statistics show. Almost 700 were murdered last year, and some of the city’s highest-ranking executives have drafted a plan to bring that down over the next five years.
Billionaire Ken Griffin cited crime as one of the reasons for moving his Citadel business to Miami, while McDonald’s Corp. Chief Executive Officer Chris Kempczinski said last year it had become harder to attract talent to the Windy City.
“I grew up in the ‘90s when 900 people were getting murdered a year, it was brutal,” Johnson said. “If anyone tells you that they can single-handily shift the political mindset that has led to the type of disinvestment that’s causing the outbreak of the violence that we are all experiencing, if any one person says they can do that, they are not being honest.”
About 60% of the violence in Chicago happens in just 6% of the city, Johnson said, adding that tackling crime requires more than just policing.
(Updates with violence in other cities in fourth paragraph. An earlier version corrected McDonald’s spelling.)
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