The city of Chicago has a persistent crime and lawlessness problem, and much of it can be traced back to policies enforced by the political leaders in charge of the deep blue city and state. Law enforcement officials have been forced into a defensive, soft-on-crime crouch for years, leading to dramatic protest resignations like this one. One consequence of the city's anti-pursuit-of-criminals guidelines is that criminals are committing dangerous, illegal acts with impunity, then fleeing -- secure in the knowledge that police will likely not chase after them, as a matter of course. A website that tracks Windy City crime on a daily basis describes harrowing vignettes playing out across the town, night after night:
Well, the sun came up again today, so that means we have to publish yet another story about the seemingly endless string of nightly armed robberies in Chicago. Once again, Chicago police officers radioed that they had located the robbers driving around the area. And, once again, Chicago police supervisors ordered the cops to terminate efforts to pull the robbers over...As was the case in the over 100 armed robberies we’ve told you about recently, last night’s spree involved armed men who jumped out of a stolen Kia to rob people at gunpoint on the street. And, once again, the robberies were centered in West Town, up to Logan Square. The robberies began around 11:35 p.m. Tuesday in the 1500 block of West Monroe. Two people were robbed there. Just before midnight, four men stepped out of the black Kia SUV and tried to rob a man in the 1700 block of West Carroll. They pushed him, pistol-whipped him, and drove away without getting anything...
CPD officers told dispatchers they spotted the robbers’ car in the 2000 block of West Division in Wicker Park around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. But the police department’s helicopter was not in service last night. Supervisors in CPD’s Shakespeare (14th) and the neighboring Near West (12th) Districts ordered their units to refrain from engaging with the vehicle. And the crew got away.
The Chicago Police Department introduced a new vehicle pursuit policy in August 2020. That order provides officers with 11 pages of instructions that they must consider when deciding if a vehicle should be pursued. The order specifically prohibits Chicago officers from pursuing anyone for a traffic offense other than DUI. And it states explicitly that CPD will not discipline any member for ending a motor vehicle pursuit. If they continue a pursuit, though, they’ll be held responsible for anything that goes wrong. Chicago has paid out tens of millions of dollars for lives lost and injuries caused by pursuits that ended with crashes. CPD supervisors have become so skittish about the possibility of something going wrong, they’ve ordered cops to stop pursuing a car suspected of carrying wanted murderers. In observance of the policy, cops downtown decided not to pursue a stolen BMW wanted for a series of armed robberies last May. Within an hour of that decision, men who emerged from the BMW shot and robbed Dakotah Earley in Lincoln Park.
This is deadly, crime-encouraging lunacy, but it's the reality in a jurisdiction now governed by this man:
Chicago’s new left-wing mayor has been conspicuously silent on recent lawless mob actions involving large groups of teen looters. When he finally addressed them, a point of emphasis was warning against calling them “mob actions.” https://t.co/iWmbJwDxbe pic.twitter.com/NA5rWzDJe8
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 3, 2023
This is par for the course with Mayor Johnson. Meanwhile, out in the San Francisco Bay Area, crime in Oakland is getting so bad that some 'progressives' are starting to sound like conservatives:
When black conservative @LarryElder warned that crime surges when criminals aren't arrested & prosecuted, he was smeared as "the black face of white supremacy." But now two of Oakland’s leading black civic leaders are saying the same thing.
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) August 2, 2023
My new column: https://t.co/B67tAHQqC6
A CNN reporter who has been covering the crime beat in the Bay Area in recent months -- recently filming and airing multiple instances of shoplifting at a Walgreens -- revealed that her crew's car was robbed this week:
I’m #Oakland, shooting a story about crime. Got broken into again— but this time our car was completely empty. We were across the street— this happened in seconds. pic.twitter.com/nsFRhxWD7J
— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) August 2, 2023
Broad daylight. "Happened in seconds." She used the word 'again' because, well:
A CNN crew has been burglarized a third time while covering the rampant crime in the Bay Area of California..."If you’re here keeping track, this is the 3rd time my CNN rented car has been broken into in the Bay Area in the last year," Lah wrote. "But I’ve finally learned to not leave even a candy bar in the car anymore (still doesn’t stop the car break in but at least we don’t lose anything)." Lah added that rental car employee told them of the 250 cars that were returned on Tuesday, "27 had been broken into, just more than 10% of cars returned." ... Lah previously went public in March after thieves were successful in robbing her crew in San Francisco. "Got robbed. Again," Lah wrote. "[CNN producer Jason Kravarik] & I were at city hall in San Francisco to do an interview for @CNN. We had security to watch our rental car + crew car. Thieves did this in under 4 seconds. Security stopped the jerks from stealing other bags. But seriously- this is ridiculous."
This brings new meaning to the concept of immersive reporting. Welcome to the new normal in these cities. I'll leave you with an unpleasant reminder that violent crime is up 37 percent in our nation's capital, year-over-year, somehow getting worse after a dreadful 2022. The leader of the DC city council -- which voted to reduce criminal penalties for crimes like carjacking before Congress intervened and imposed adult supervision -- testified that there is "no crime crisis" in the city, using his appearance before a Congressional committee to chastise his hosts for insufficient diversity on the panel.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member