CHICAGO – At least 72 people were shot, including 12 fatally, over the weekend in Chicago, another eruption of violence in a city that has struggled with murders and shootings in recent years even as the national homicide rate hovers near historic lows.
Police investigated a 13th murder – the slaying of 32-year-old woman who was found dead around 9 p.m. Sunday in a bathtub with her hands and feet bound. The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office was scheduled to conduct an autopsy Monday to determine how the woman, Shantel Boler, was slain.
No arrests have been made in any of the incidents, but police said investigators have strong leads for some of the shootings.
"There is a shortage of values about what is right, what is wrong," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said. "We as a city, in every corner, have an accountability and responsibility. If you know who did this, be a neighbor. Speak up."
The violence, which police says is primarily fueled by gangs, disproportionately affects several swaths of low-income black and Latino neighborhoods on the city’s West and South Sides.
The latest shootings, stretching over a 60-hour period from Friday evening until early Monday morning, came after city officials expressed optimism that Chicago had made headway in cutting the persistent gun violence.
At the end of July, the city had recorded more than 300 murders –more than any other U.S. city, but an improvement for Chicago. Murders were down 23% compared with the same point last year, and the city tallied 19% fewer shooting incidents.
The weekend’s violence underscored that although the city had witnessed a positive trend, several neighborhoods remain volatile.
Thirty-nine people were shot, including five fatally, in a roughly seven-hour span late Saturday and early Sunday. In a half-dozen of the weekend's incidents, at least four victims were wounded or killed by gunfire, according to police reports.
In one incident, around 12:40 a.m. Sunday, several gunmen fired on a group of people standing in the courtyard of a building, wounding eight. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 35 in the shooting in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood on the city’s South Side. No one was in custody for that shooting.
Around 3:30 a.m. Monday, police responded to a call of shots fired on the city's West Side. Officers found a 29-year-old man wounded in the neck. He was transported to a nearby hospital but succumbed to his injuries.
Police have solved or made arrests in few of the killings – the murder clearance rate for the city has hovered around 20% in recent years.
The murder rate has become an issue for Emanuel, who is up for re-election in February. Monday morning, Emanuel visited two area hospitals that treated many of those wounded over the weekend to thank officials for their work.
“What Chicago witnessed this weekend was absolutely horrific and should not be tolerated," mayoral challenger Paul Vallas said. "Right now, Chicago has one of the worst clearance rates for homicides and other violent crimes among America’s major cities. This is a crisis in which four out of five killers in Chicago are literally getting away with murder."
Last week, dozens of protesters temporarily shut down the Windy City’s Lake Shore Drive to express their outrage over Chicago’s endemic gun violence and call for Emanuel’s resignation.
The demonstration's organizers timed the protest to coincide with rush-hour traffic along the busy thoroughfare on the city’s lakefront, then marched to Wrigley Field, where the Chicago Cubs hosted the San Diego Padres.
Ira Acree, co-chairman of the Leaders Network-Chicago and a pastor on the city’s West Side, said this weekend’s violence shows that two Chicagos exist – one that is thriving and largely inoculated from the shootings and another ravaged by a lack of investment and indifference from the city’s politicians.
“Chicago's political leadership – Emanuel and City Council – won't address the poverty that fuels the frustration, anger and self-hatred which leads to violence,” Acree said. “As a concerned citizen and pastor, I am against all forms of violence – urban, domestic and police violence – but until we confront the institutional economic violence being committed at City Hall, substantial transformation will never take place.”
The mayor pushed $55 million in grants to help boost small-business creation in some of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the violence. Emanuel also touts his One Summer Chicago program, which offers more than 30,000 paid internships to city teens and young adults.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson blames the violence, in part, on gun laws that he said aren't stringent enough to dissuade criminals from using a weapon. He said police need more help from the community, so authorities can identify, arrest and prosecute culprits.
"They hold me accountable, they hold the mayor accountable, they hold the City Council accountable," Johnson said. "You know what I never hear? I never hear people saying these individuals out on the street need to stop pulling the trigger. I never hear that. They get a pass from everybody."
Contributing: John Bacon
WSOC
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