During what was supposed to be a routine traffic stop on Saturday night, a young Chicago police officer, Ella French, was killed when the passengers started shooting. Another officer is fighting for his life.
This is CPD Officer Ella French. #NeverForget
— Sal LaBarbera (@Sal_LaBarbera) August 8, 2021
Say her name. She leaves behind a newborn baby.
She sacrificed her life to protect the citizens of Chicago. Her partner is in critical condition. ????for him. #BackTheBlue ???? pic.twitter.com/pXvAxuZIiV
Mayor Lori Lightfoot mourned the death on Twitter, also noting it was "an official day of mourning for the city."
Some say we don't do enough for the police. Others say we do too much. All of this must stop.
— Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) August 8, 2021
We have a common enemy: it's guns & the violence they bring.
Devoted officers reported for duty today despite their fears & pain. These officers deserve to make it home safely today and everyday.
— Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) August 8, 2021
She is also receiving criticism for one of her tweets about the officer's death, however.
Shut up https://t.co/JZprmdDJsz
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) August 8, 2021
.@chicagosmayor Guns are NOT the enemy, it’s the human scum that uses them to harm people. Your racism and anti law and order attitude, Kim Foxx and our liberal courts are the common enemy https://t.co/HGn3k6juov
— Chicago guy (@GuyChicago5151) August 8, 2021
You know, I thought it was a reach to place blame at Mayor Lightfoot for the death of Ella French but when she posts scapegoat takes like this instead of meeting the moment & saying as a city, Chicago has to do better dealing with it's crime problem, she sure makes it hard not to https://t.co/GCoZrx47AC
— Forever1984 (@4eva1984) August 8, 2021
The common enemy is you, Lori. Politicizing an officer's death to advance your agenda is poor form and in poor taste. I'm curious if these cops waiting at the hospital had turned their back on you before or after your vapid tweet. https://t.co/JAhwxEMqon pic.twitter.com/QAsrZCDHHR
— Durts McGlurp (@REEckert) August 8, 2021
You’re supposed to be giving your condolences to the family who lost their loved one, a police officer who just gave birth TWO MONTHS AGO and you choose this time to talk about banning guns? Fuck all the way off. Your city is in shambles and it’s not because of guns you idiot https://t.co/ZIt3hNkX8c
— Madison (@prolife_madison) August 8, 2021
The mayor was also criticized for blaming the death on "guns & the violence they bring," rather than the criminals who commit that violence.
Are you fucking stupid? I've been around guns most of my life and never once has a gun just stood up and started shooting people on its own.
— Socal Crypto, Bane of Bears (@Socal_crypto) August 8, 2021
The enemy is CRIMINALS, and criminals will ALWAYS get guns.
You’re wrong @chicagosmayor . The real enemy is GANGS and NO CONSEQUENCES FOR CRIMINALS.
— Karen Miller (@MillerKAP) August 8, 2021
The common enemy are Gangs. And always will be gangs. But yet again, another politician who refuses to admit there is a problem with the gang culture in the city. There is a reason majority of the violence is subjected to certain part of the city, it’s the gang culture.
— mrh39 (@mrh392) August 8, 2021
Drugs, gangs and no respect for law enforcement—you think that might have something to do with it?
— Robert (@your007) August 8, 2021
IDK how you blame an inanimate object for crime. A criminal, a murderer did this. Crime is our common enemy, and the people who commit those crimes.
— ??Speedy Ophelia?? (@HSAddict697) August 8, 2021
No. It’s CRIMINALS and the violence THEY bring. Guns don’t pull the trigger themselves.
— Trotter (@Trotter87528503) August 8, 2021
A gun is like a brick- it is amoral. I can use a brick to build a hospital or I can use a brick to physically assault and kill someone. The brick does not have a choice either way.
— A Jacobs (@GCMPats) August 8, 2021
Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but leads the way in shootings.
As Odette Yousef reported in a WBEZ Chicago article from June 17:
Hours after Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called on federal authorities to help Chicago in curbing gun violence, the city experienced its third mass shooting in just four days.
“Unfortunately, Chicago is not unique,” Lightfoot said early on Tuesday. “We are part of a club of cities to which no one wants to belong: cities with mass shootings.”
But a WBEZ analysis of mass shootings suggests that Chicago is, in fact, unique for its frequency and volume of mass shootings. Defining such incidents as those involving at least four shooting victims or deaths — excluding the shooter — the city has seen 124 such events since Jan. 1, 2019. That’s at least twice as many as the city with the second-highest tally, Philadelphia. Despite media coverage of shootings in Chicago, this fact is rarely highlighted.
For the analysis, WBEZ used data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a nonprofit research group that compiles information from several sources about gun-related activity, as well as from the Chicago Police Department. While data from the GVA show that mass shootings drastically spiked across the nation during the pandemic, particularly over the warmer months of June through September, Chicago continues to outpace other large cities.
The analysis shows that Chicago is averaging just under one mass shooting per week since the start of 2019. In all, 82 people have been killed and another 535 have been shot or injured. A map of those incidents shows that they are clustered in the city’s historically disinvested South and West sides. And among the cases where the Chicago Police Department has identified the race of mass shooting victims, more than 82% were Black, according to the analysis.
Local news outlet WGNTV recently reported that there were 461 in the month of July alone, with 614 people shot. Ninety percent of the 105 murders were a result of gun violence.
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