For the second weekend this month, shootings in Chicago topped 60 despite Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s new plan to curb a deadly streak of violence that has rocked the city since the beginning of the summer.
In less than three days, 60 people were shot in the city. Eight people were killed, including a pair of teenagers who were left to die in a field with multiple gunshot wounds.
Five people were wounded — one seriously — in an incident that qualifies as a mass shooting. Gunmen in a “black van” opened fire on a softball game taking place in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. No one was arrested.
The weekend was deadly but not August’s deadliest. The first weekend of the month, more than 70 people were shot and a dozen killed. Last weekend, the numbers dipped below 60, giving the city’s top brass a short reprieve from public scrutiny — a reprieve that ended Monday morning.
Responding to the first 60-plus-shooting weekend, Emanuel begged residents of Chicago’s south and west sides to report neighbors who might be involved in gang-related violence, and pleaded with the city to reform its ways. Chicago’s police department announced that several hundred officers would be deployed to areas of the the city plagued by shootings, and pressed officers to engage more fully in community policing efforts.
Emanuel called the wave of violence evidence that the city is suffering from a “shortage of values.”
The mayor’s office has yet to respond to this weekend’s numbers.