Black murders soar in US’s most gun controlled city

Last month 74 murders, 321 shootings and 410 shooting victims, were registered, the police announced on Tuesday. These incidents of gun violence, which occur in the city with some of the most draconian gun control laws in the United States, leapt from 2 426 in 2015 to 3 550 in 2016.

According to Chicago police, there have been 402 murders in the city so far this year, with 74 people killed in July alone. An that number does not include killings on road-related killings, police-involved shootings, self-defense deaths or death investigations, NBC reported.

Some 25 expressway shootings have been reported in Chicago so far this year, according to Illinois State Police, with at least six people wounded on expressways in July alone.

“The lethality of the shootings, we can’t really control that,” police chief Eddie Johnson told NBC 5 as the numbers were released.

In the real world, on the mostly African-American West and Southside of Chicago, murders and shootings saw their biggest spike in decades. In 2015, there were 485 murders in Chicago. In 2016 that number jumped by an incredible 57 percent to 762, more than New York and Los Angeles combined.

Even more worrying is that the increase comes after Chicago police reported last month that they have removed more than 5 000 guns this year off Chicago streets. The department has also rolled out several initiatives this year, including a high-tech ballistics programme.

Some 20 permanent ATF agents, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a law enforcement agency in the United States’ Department of Justice were deployed to the city, along with federal prosecutors, with the purpose of “prioritizing prosecutions to reduce gun violence, and working with our law enforcement partners to stop the lawlessness”.

Despite these measures, the month also recorded one of the city’s most violent Fourth of July holidays, with more than 100 people shot over the four-day weekend. That’s compared to 66 people shot over the holiday in 2016.

Last year, the month of August became the deadliest month in two decades with 90 murders in 31 days. By the end of the month, the city had recorded just over 470 homicides for the year.

Chicago has a massive and growing black murder problem. The data from the Chicago Police Department can be accessed here. Both the current and former Police Superintendents agree that African-American criminals have been emboldened by the crusade against law enforcement.

Current Superintendent Johnson acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that officers have become more cautious — in part out of fear of becoming the next “viral video”. That, he said, has “emboldened” criminals. “Criminals watch TV, pay attention to the media,” he said. “They see an opportunity to commit nefarious activity.”

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy also blamed the Black Lives Matter movement for causing a rise in violent crime around the country.

During a radio interview with John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York, McCarthy blamed black protests in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Charlotte, for creating a “political atmosphere of anti-police sentiment”.

“So what’s happening, and this is ironic, is that a movement with the goal of saving black lives at this point is getting black lives taken, because 80 percent of our murder victims here in Chicago are male blacks,” McCarthy said. “Less than half of 1 percent of all the shootings in this city involve police officers shooting civilians.”

McCarthy added that president Trump’s popularity with voters were in part a reaction to anti-white movements. “I think the Trump election quite frankly is a reaction to that,” he said. “I think the people are tired of career politicians who’ve never really had a job telling us how we should think and how we should act.”

In 2011, there were 140 convicted offenders for the 128 victims with an associated prosecution. There were more offenders than victims because 10.7 percent of murders had two offenders and 10.0 percent had three or more offenders convicted. Some 87 percent of all offenders had a prior arrest history, and offenders were male in 88 percent of the cases.

The number of black men murdered by firearms, mostly at the hands of other black men, is a moot point in the mainstream media, as are the increased number of ambushes.

The ambush-style killings of police officers in the US show deadly increase in a disturbing trend for law enforcement nationwide: the number of police officers gunned down has increased by 167 percent last year according to a law enforcement group.

It ties for the deadliest year for such attacks, matching 2014’s 16 ambush-style killings, USA Today noted.

In all, there have now been 40 officers shot and killed in ambushes since 2014, said Steve Groeninger, spokesperson for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks police fatalities.

A total of 115 officers have been killed in the line of duty in 2016, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, 52 of those officers were killed by gunfire, a 58 percent increase.

“All of these tragedies remind us in very stark terms that America’s law enforcement professionals are facing clear and growing dangers on our behalf. And, when our police officers are at risk, we are all at risk,” Groeninger told USA Today.

On average, one law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty in the United States every 61 hours.