Forty-three people were shot in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend, with nine people killed and 34 others injured, including two toddlers, according to the police.
Victims of the shootings range in age from 2 to 77 years, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) said. At least a dozen of them were fired at while standing on sidewalks late at night and into the early morning hours.
At around 1:45 a.m. on Sunday, three people were shot while standing on the sidewalk on the 9100-block of South Harper Avenue when someone drove by and opened fire at them. A 59-year-old man, a 57-year-old woman, and a 77-year-old man were all hit and taken to local hospitals.
Less than a day earlier, at around 2:55 a.m. Saturday, a 36-year-old man was killed and a 37-year-old woman was critically wounded in a shooting in the 2300 block of West 18th Street. Police said the victims were standing on the sidewalk when someone opened fire from an unknown direction. Both individuals were shot in the face and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where the man was pronounced dead.
About 30 minutes later, a 22-year-old man was shot while standing on the sidewalk in the 2400 block of South Homan Avenue at 3:20 a.m. Police said the shot was fired in his direction. The man took a hit to the chest and was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
None of the aforementioned cases have resulted in any arrests yet.
The CPD also reported two unrelated cases involving two-year-old children being shot.
Shortly after 6 p.m. on Sunday, a 2-year-old girl found a gun in the 1500 block of West Jonquil Terrace and accidentally shot herself in the right hand, police said.
Later that same day, a 2-year-old boy was playing in a bedroom with an adult in the 7900 block of South Hermitage Avenue when a gun was discharged, hitting him in the hand, police said.
Both children have been taken to the hospital in fair condition. No arrests were made.
New Mayor, New Plan
The shootings come after Chicago’s new Democrat mayor, Brandon Johnson, and his interim police superintendent, Fred Waller, unveiled a new plan to reduce violence across the city.During last Thursday’s press conference, Johnson and Walker highlighted some more intensive patrol efforts, including that all officers would get one less day off this holiday weekend.
But the centerpiece of this plan is a multi-million dollar investment in programs aimed at giving young people better things to do.
“I’m talking about $3.5 million in grants to more than 250 community organizations to fund safe programming and activities for young people during the summer months, beginning Memorial Day,” Johnson said.
The public-private partnership will support violence prevention and youth outreach efforts across 24 communities on the South and West sides, beginning with engaging youth in activities during Memorial Day weekend and during the gap between the end of the school year and the beginning of Chicago Park District programming, according to the mayor’s office.
Johnson, who took office on May 15, inherited a police department that has roughly 1,700 fewer officers than when his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, started four years ago.
The CPD, alongside many other departments across the United States, is hemorrhaging officers faster than it can find qualified applicants. Data suggests that it has lost more than 3,300 officers and staff between 2019 and 2022, but has hired just 1,600 people to fill the vacancies left by those demoralized by the anti-police riots and calls to “defund the police” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
Running on a platform of tackling the “root causes of crime” and slashing the CPD budget by $150 million, Johnson defeated his opponent, police union-endorsed fellow Democrat Paul Vallas.
A former city budget director, Vallas vowed to slow the police exodus and fill the 1,700 vacancies, in part by doubling the police academy’s training capacity and bringing retired officers back into service. He also accused Johnson of wanting to defund the police.
“My opponent wants to defund the police,” he said about Johnson in a public debate in March. “I believe that police officers need to be at the entrance of the schools, or at the very least a police car at the beginning or the end of the school day.”
