It was a gunfire-filled holiday weekend in Chicago, where there were more than two dozen shooting incidents since Friday. A total of 12 people were killed and some 40 wounded, in what amounted to double the number of fatalities of last year, when six people were killed over the Christmas weekend. “We had a reprehensible amount of shootings and murders” this weekend Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.
Among those killed this year were James Gill, 18, and Roy Gill, 21, who were shot on a front porch during a family Christmas Day party on the city’s South Side. Five other people, mostly relatives of the Gill brothers, were wounded. The violence continued Monday morning, when five people were wounded and increased to almost 50 the number of people who were shot over the long Christmas weekend. Police said that most of the killings were “targeted attacks by gangs against potential rivals who were at holiday gatherings,” Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, said. “Ninety percent of those fatally wounded had gang affiliations, criminal histories and were pre-identified by the department’s strategic subject algorithm as being a potential suspect or victim of gun violence.”
The violent weekend comes at the end of a year that has been exceptionally violent in Chicago, where around 750 people have been killed. That marks a huge increase from the already shocking numbers from last year, when 488 people were killed. The homicide rate in Chicago is so high that it is dramatically affecting nationwide statistics. The homicide rate for the country’s 30 biggest cities is expected to rise 14 percent this year, with Chicago accounting for 44 percent of that increase, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
As homicides continue to increase, the number of arrests in Chicago “is on target to be the city’s lowest since at least 2001,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Police say the decline shows how law enforcement is focusing on gun violence rather than just indiscriminately detaining people for tiny offenses.
