Under fire for a 60 percent surge in Chicago homicides, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed fingers Thursday without naming names.
The mayor ticked off the steps he has taken, so far without success, to stop the bloodbath. They include: gang audits, a stricter curfew policy, increased spending for after-school programs, shifting 600 police officers from desk jobs to street duty and cracking down on liquor and convenience stores.
Then, he asked a fundamental question.
“You can say, are you doing it right? [But] the question is, why were those policies not done before? Why was it the police department was not organized to have a gang audit to do pro-active efforts to intervene on reprisal shootings that are driving the numbers? We’re doing that,” the mayor said.
“We have a particular problem in the city as it relates to gangs and we were not organized across a waterfront of areas: policing, dealing with liquor stores in communities or our prosecutorial laws in dealing with that gang problem and getting that organized.”
Emanuel never mentioned the name of his predecessor and political mentor, former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Nor did he single out former Police Supt. Jody Weis, who jumped ship to avoid being pushed out by Emanuel.
Gee, we sure didn't do much for the past 20 or 25 years evidently. No ICAM, no CAPS, no SOS, MSF, TRU working the boxes 10 and 15 years ago. No gang maps, gangs North, South and West, no Task Force.