Lightfoot's Chicago: On-Duty Police Detective Robbed While Investigating Homicide
On Monday evening, a Chicago Police Department detective was mugged by two armed individuals while canvassing the location of a recent homicide, authorities said.
One of the two suspects was taken into police custody, but the other was not immediately caught.
The two officers involved in the incident were investigating in the 7700 block of South Yates Boulevard, according to WMAQ-TV.
As the detectives canvassed the area, two people approached the now-injured officer from behind, police said, assaulting him and going through his pockets. The detective’s partner witnessed the incident and quickly intervened as the offenders fled the scene.
Both offenders were armed, police said, according to CWB Chicago — one brandishing a knife, while the other had a handgun.
Police were able to detain one of the suspects soon thereafter. The injured detective was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for head and neck injuries. According to WMAQ, the officer was in stable condition.
According to an end-of-year report from The Associated Press, “The number of homicides and shootings in Chicago spiked dramatically in 2020, ending with more bloodshed than every year but one in more than two decades, statistics released by police revealed.”
“Law enforcement officials have pointed to social and economic upheaval caused by coronavirus measures, anti-police sentiment following Floyd’s death and a historic shortage of jobs in poor communities” as contributing factors to the homicide spike, the AP reported.
Moreover, 79 officers were shot at in 2020, according to Chicago police, more than three times as many as in 2019.
Violence against cops didn’t just rise in Chicago. “America’s law enforcement officers were confronted with the pandemic, protests, and defund police movements, which made it not only one of the most challenging years in recent memory, but one of the deadliest,” the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund said, calling 2020 “a horrific year for law enforcement.”
A total of 210 officers died in 2020, up 58 percent from 2019, when there were 135 on-duty deaths.
These statistics are incredibly alarming and raise serious questions about the current societal climate surrounding police brutality in the United States.
Chicago, currently run by Mayor Lori Lightfoot — the latest in a long line of Democratic leaders — has historically been one of the deadliest cities in America. But the city saw unprecedented levels of death in 2020. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend in modern history, according to data reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.
Last June, Roland Fryer, an African-American professor at Harvard University known for his 2016 study on racial differences related to police use of force, co-published a working paper that discussed the role viral videos showcasing police incidents have on crime rates the following months.
In it, he revealed some shocking discoveries.
“All investigations that were preceded by ‘viral’ incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced,” the paper said.
2020 was truly the perfect storm for spikes in crime, particularly due to COVID restrictions resulting in huge waves of unemployment and the summer violence that occurred during the Black Lives Matter movement after a police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck in an arrest caught on video.
We must understand that multiple things can be true at once:
The outrage that ensued following Floyd’s death led to some real change and informed people about actual policies that could help reduce police brutality. (Many people became aware of the dangers of qualified immunity, for instance). At the same time, however, the outrage also resulted in large-scale displays of rioting, looting and violence — all things that only serve to make the lives of both citizens and police officers worse in the long run.
A balance is required in our political dialogue so that we can solve problems as a nation before the climate grows too toxic. And this isn’t just the case with discussions about race and policing.
This extends to every avenue within our discourse. Politics is downstream of culture. Our differences and similarities in our cultural experience shape much of our political beliefs and debate.
If we can unify around the values we share as Americans, we could begin to shed light on sustainable answers to our nation’s problems.
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