Could the mainstream media be picking up on the obvious connection between short stays in prison, so-called “prison reforms” and other soft-on-crime efforts with Chicagoland’s burgeoning violent crime problem?
Even a broken clock is right twice each day.
Chicago’s grim murder trend blamed on light sentencing, misguided reforms
Chicago (Tribune) – Lamar Harris had seven felony convictions and 43 arrests when he shot three Chicago police officers. The same week, Samuel Harviley, who had just been paroled after serving less than half of his sentence for armed carjacking, shot yet another of the Windy City’s finest.
Police officials, researchers and many elected leaders all agree that the pair were prime examples of the violent pool of criminals driving the city’s historically high crime rate. Ex-cons well-known to police and with a proven propensity for violence are being let out early from prison or let off lightly by judges, only to wreak havoc on the city, they say.
“The fact that a convicted felon and gun offender is yet again out on early release to torment communities is representative of the types of individuals who are overwhelmingly driving the recent spike in violence,” then-interim police Superintendent John Escalante said at a news conference last month announcing charges against Harviley.
The cycle of violence has resulted in more than 800 shootings so far this year, including seven shootings and one murder on April 4 alone. Escalante’s successor, former Chicago Police Department Chief of Patrol Eddie Johnson, says the rate of murders and shootings can’t be reversed until the criminal justice system begins to hold offenders accountable.
That will require Democrat politicians who run Chicago (and Illinois) to hold violent criminal actors responsible, and the last thing they seem to want to do is anger their core constituencies by putting these people in prison.
According to the CPD’s most recent CompStat figures, 133 people have been murdered in 2016, compared to 77 during the same period in 2015. Shootings are up 91 percent.
These sad sacks can’t even be honest about how many people have been murdered in Chicago.
HeyJackass has a whole lot more homicides than “CompStat”:
Year to Date
Shot & Killed: 143
Shot & Wounded: 761
Total Shot: 904
Total Homicides: 163
But that’s what happens when you “massage” the stats to classify cases like the guy who decapitated himself with a coal-powered chainsaw (with defensive wounds on his hands) as a suicide instead of a homicide.
HeyJackass counts homicides, not murders. Of those 143, 2 were shot by police and 6 were justifiable homicides by armed citizens.
Soft on crime liberalism leads to more (and more violent) crime?
Is the Trib going to report that Water is Wet tomorrow?
What a novel concept.