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Commentary By Heather Mac Donald

Chicago Crime and Democratic Values

Public Safety, Cities Crime Control, Chicago, Policing

To showcase his city, the mayor puts his antipolice policies on hold until after the convention.

The Democratic National Committee presented its 2024 convention site as a show of confidence. “Chicago is a world-class city that looks like America and demonstrates the values of the Democratic Party,” Brandon Johnson, then mayor-elect, said in the DNC’s April 2023 announcement.

Fast-forward to this July 4. Over the four-day holiday weekend in Chicago, 19 people were fatally shot and more than 100 wounded by gunfire. One of them, 8-year-old Bryson Orr, was killed along with two women in a drive-by shooting. This wasn’t unusual. On Memorial Day weekend, 10 people lost their lives to gun violence, including 5-year-old Reign Ware. On Father’s Day weekend, more than 70 people were shot and eight killed. The child victims this summer include 7-year-old Jai’Mani Amir Rivera, fatally shot in the chest while walking to a neighbor’s house on June 18. A 3-month-old boy named Jemimah—his parents, fearing for their safety, have kept the family name out of the news—was shot in the chest on July 27 while riding in a car and remains in critical condition. On Thursday, a 3-year-old boy was grazed by a bullet fired by an adversary of his father.

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)

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Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal. Her latest book is When Race Trumps Merit.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images