More than 60 people were shot in Chicago over the holiday weekend, at least nine of them killed,
according to ABC News, including a host of drivebys that struck intended targets in addition to bystanders and those in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The spate of gun violence is bad news for Windy City Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who just 18 months ago went on a media blitz
boasting of a reduced crime rate since being elected mayor in 2011.
“The Mayor credits his administration's strategies for reducing violence, as well as Chicago's overall crime rate,” ABC News New York reported.
In April,
Chicago magazine published a two-part series questioning the city’s purported drop in crime, quoting numerous police sources who said they were asked or pressured to reclassify reports to downgrade crimes and, in some cases, make cases disappear.
The “troubling practice” included cases of those who were “beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013 and whose cases were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons.”
The Independence Day weekend shootings – which brought the tally to 1,129 in the city so far this year -- included a woman in her 60s struck by a stray bullet while standing on her front porch, a teenager shot in his car, and a man hit by a falling bullet,
The Huffington Post reports.
Emanuel was featured prominently in the eight-part CNN reality series “Chicagoland” earlier this year, where he was depicted as the troubled city’s “cheerleader in chief.” In April, the
Chicago Tribune published a story – after reviewing more than 700 emails the newspaper obtained via a public records request -- that said Emanuel’s staff worked with the show’s producers to contrive many of the scenes. The emails revealed that “the production team worked hand in hand with the mayor's advisers to develop storylines, arrange specific camera shots and review news releases officially announcing the show.”
President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel, a Democrat, is the subject of media speculation about whether he may run for president in 2016.
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