Chicago’s crime rate has skyrocketed under Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s wing, making the city one of the most dangerous places in the U.S.
However, rather than rethinking her soft-on-crime policies, Lightfoot blames the crisis on everything else.
Earlier this week, Lightfoot suggested street vendors stop using cash to stem Chicago’s crime problem.
During a mayoral debate with eight other opponents, Lightfoot offered so-called “solutions” to the issue.
“I heard a lot of rhetoric here, a lot of soundbites, but not a lot of concrete solutions on how we get the job done and make our residents and our workers safe. We’re doing it every single day,” Lightfoot said, however, the city’s crime rate has yet to slow down.
“We have been in Little Village working with those street vendors, understanding what the nature of the crime is, making sure that we’re doing things in concert with them to help them, to make sure that their money is secure. Not use money, if at all possible, using other forms of transactions to carry themselves,” the mayor continued to say.
The first three questions for Lightfoot centered around crime, in which she claimed the city’s homicide and shooting rates have gone down. However, one of her opponents, Community activist Ja'Mal Green, accused her of lying about the numbers.
“I'm trying to figure out – how do we continue to allow the mayor to lie about the numbers?” Green asked. “We are not down when it comes to before her administration started. The year before last, it was a 25-year high. So of course, we're going to have some sort of a decrease. We've had 700-plus homicides for three years in a row under the mayor, and she has not been connected to the neighborhoods or to what's going on on the ground.”
According to the Chicago Police Department, city crime spiked 65 percent from year-to-date the previous year, while sexual assault rose 16 percent, robbery went up by 37 percent and motor vehicle theft soared by 175 percent.