GREGORY: Mayor, before you go, I want to ask you about a huge crisis in your own city, and that is of course the murder rate, it’s up 31 percent from a year ago. Forty shootings just last weekend, nine left dead. A couple of people shot, even near the President’s home on the south side. What are you doing to address this?
MR. EMANUEL: First, we put more police on the street. Getting kids, guns and drugs off the street. Our crime rate is down 10 percent. And our, in fact, our shootings have declined from what was basically we lost the early part of the first quarter of the year, and we brought them dramatically down. We have a-- a gang issue on parts of the city. Overall, overall crime down 10 percent. And we’re making efforts actually to reduce the gang conflicts because it’s gang-on-gang issues. It does not affect the whole city. But anywhere it happens we’re going to be dealing with it.
GREGORY: Is this not a crisis in your estimation? Is it something that’s being overblown or is this something that you have a hard time containing at the moment?
MR. EMANUEL: No, we’re containing it and the-- and the question I have is not whether people say a crisis or challenge, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure every child when they’re going to school can think about their studies not their safety regardless of where they live. And that’s my first priority.
GREGORY: Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, thank you as always. We will see you down in Charlotte this week.
Let's just point out the lies:
- More police on the street? Bullshit - there are less than ever. Taking 500 cops out of their street units and putting them "back on the streets" isn't "more police." But the media treats this like gospel. The retirements haven't abated either;
- Crime rate is down 10%? Do we really have to go through this again? Murder, shootings, bank robberies and auto theft are all up. Not to mention the lowest number of officers on the street during the past two decades. The only thing that would remotely bring the crime rate down is a massive influx of people to Chicago - maybe that's the reasoning? Sanctuary City and all?
- Containing it? We aren't containing it and the "boxes" aren't working. We're lucky we aren't digging trenches, closing roads and raising the bridges to keep it where it's at. "Containing it" is about as humorous as "treading water."