Chicago correspondent William Kelly, who has had several contentious exchanges with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in recent months, said Monday that her reaction to the shooting death of police officer Ella French is "despicable" given her push to defund the city's police department.
"As I'm sure you've seen in my interviews with her, she denies that there was even race riots in Chicago in 2020 and she claims that crime is down; the shootings are down," said Kelly on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now." "We had another 70 plus shootings in Chicago this weekend., which has bizarrely become the norm."
"The police are not our enemies," Lightfoot said in the comments Kelly criticized. "They’re human, just as we are. We have a common enemy. It’s the guns and the gangs. Eradicating both is complex. But we cannot let the size of the challenge deter us. We have to continue striking hard blows every day."
French, he added, was "savagely murdered and her partner is still in the hospital fighting for his life. This is going to be a turning point. I have to believe that has to be if we accept this, then all hope is lost."
French, 29, was killed and her partner was critically wounded during a traffic stop Saturday night in Chicago's South Side. She had been a police officer since April 2018 and was the first in the department to be shot and killed in the line of duty since Lightfoot took office in 2019, reports The Chicago Tribune.
Kelly on Monday said the people of Chicago are being heard, particularly police officers and their families, and "they've lost all faith (in) the mayor. I'm hearing from people of Chicago telling me that it's time for Mayor Lori Lightfoot to do the right thing and simply resign."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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