Over 100 people were shot in Chicago over Father’s Day weekend.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, at least 89 people were wounded in shootings that took place between Friday evening and Monday morning in the Windy City, and 15 were killed — some of them children.
Another deadly weekend
All across the country, social unrest has come alongside an explosion of rioting, looting, arson, and gun violence, even as police are encouraged to look the other way by a wave of hostility to their profession.
The unspeakable carnage in Chicago over the weekend played out as rumors swirled of a police boycott.
At least 104 people were shot between Friday and Monday, the Sun-Times reported, leaving 15 dead, including five children, continuing a summer of bloodshed that saw the city’s deadliest Memorial Day weekend in years.
One of the victims of last weekend’s violence was a 3-year-old boy, who was gunned down after getting a haircut with his stepfather, according to the local ABC 7.
“These kids are not criminals,” Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said, according to ABC 7. “They are not gang members. They have nothing to do with the ongoing disputes out there and they just get gunned down for no reason at all.”
Blue flu?
The chaos comes as police are feeling handicapped and morally exhausted, with the city’s Democratic mayor condemning speculation of an organized sick-out, or “blue flu,” as ABC 7 reported.
“The anti-police rhetoric and just lack of appreciation of the members of the Chicago Police Department have everybody frustrated,” FOP president John Catanzara told the network. “The calls for defunding and revamping police departments and all of this nonsense in a weekend where you had literally, on a Monday afternoon, yesterday during storms, there were still forty people shot and six people killed in the city.”
There have been reports of low police morale in a number of American cities as those in law enforcement battle a spike in violent crime coupled with an anti-police sentiment that has reached an unprecedented pitch.
In a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, President Donald Trump, for his part, compared Chicago to a third world country — continuing his longtime criticism of the city as an example of failed Democratic leadership — as he condemned the anarchy unfolding across the country.
“Chicago is an example, it is worse than Afghanistan,” Trump told Hannity, according to Fox. “These cities, it’s like living in hell.”
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