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| ATF help not in time for Independence Day casualties |
This holiday weekend was particularly long (stretching from Friday afternoon to early Wednesday). So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise that some 101 people were shot – and 15 died.
AND
AS THE Chicago Tribune pointed out Wednesday in its report, about half of those
shootings occurred in the last 12 hours of the extended holiday weekend.
Something
about summer heat and fireworks and the fact that many of the people who feel
inclined to have them aren’t among the most stable of individuals in our
society.
So
explosive devices can cause heated tempers that can result in other types of
deadly devices being used.
This
revelation shouldn’t be shocking. Even though the idea of even one death ought to
be appalling.
BUT
IT IS just the type of tidbit that will get the Trump types all worked up.
Trump, of course, being the guy who played partisan politics earlier this year
by saying he’d “send in the feds” to respond to Chicago violence.
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| Coping w/ the city's levels of violence |
It was only last week that he gave any indication just what his vague threat actually meant; federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents were reassigned to Chicago to work with a Chicago Police task force meant to reduce the flow of firearms within the city.
That
same task force also is getting help from the Cook County sheriff’s police. I
don’t doubt that the additional staffing will help in some form. Although we
can make a serious argument that Trump’s effort (which amounts to some 20
federal agents contributed to the task force) is long overdue.
Quite
frankly, if Trump were serious about addressing the problems of crime and urban
violence, such an effort would have been made long ago. And it wouldn’t have
been done in the form of threats to the city.
WE
REALLY DO get the impression that this is more of a lame effort meant to
entitle Trump to continue to make his snide comments about the city. And they
won’t even be particularly well-thought-out comments – they’ll be the usual
Twitter trash.
Trite
snippets of no more than 140 characters that are meant more to appeal to the
segment of society that already agrees with him, rather than try to explain his
motivations for his actions.
My
point is that I don’t think much of the federal effort. I don’t think it will
do much of anything to reduce the amount of violence that is occurring in the
city. I don’t think Chicago will be any safer a place because of the
presidential initiative.
Actually,
much of the city already is fairly safe. It is select neighborhoods that have
problems, and I’m pretty sure that the voter demographic of those segments of
Chicago are such that Trump personally could care less whether they ever get
better. After all, they were the parts of Chicago where he only got about 1 or 2 percent of the vote in the November 2016 elections!
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| Would Trump build in Chgo if truly dangerous? |
THE
SAD PART, though, is that many other Chicagoans also don’t care much what happens
in places like the Englewood neighborhood. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn
many Chicagoans don’t know where on the South Side the neighborhood is, and
would never dream of setting foot in it.
It
is that type of apathy that allows for the current conditions – too many of us
figure it’s “not my problem” if it isn’t occurring in our specific
neighborhood. And on the occasions when such actions creep into our
neighborhood, we look for the excuses that the people who did it were from
somewhere else.
As
things were, it seems Chicago police made arrests of 58 people during the
holiday weekend on assorted weapons and narcotics charges. But as the Chicago
Tribune reported, that didn’t stop the outburst of violence during the final
hours of the holiday weekend.
All
in all, a tragedy. Although somehow, I suspect many people will feel more
sympathy for the death in the Gage Park neighborhood of a man killed late
Tuesday when he bent over a fireworks tube that hadn’t ignited. It suddenly
shot off, and he was hit in the head.
-30-
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