The Reality of Chicago’s “Carnage”

By Neil A. Carousso

President Donald J. Trump is dead on about carnage in Chicago and other American inner cities. The third largest city in the United States saw a 57 percent increase in homicides in 2016 from the year prior.

Since 2001, Chicago has experienced 8,384 murders, according to the Chicago Police Department. The number of Americans killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is 2,392 and 4,514, respectively, since 2001, according to iCasualities.org. 

If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

President Trump tweeted from his personal Twitter account Tuesday night writing that he would “send in the Feds” if the City of Chicago doesn’t fix the “horrible ‘carnage,'” a reference to his inauguration address that got unusually negative press from journalists and opinion commentators, like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews who shockingly called the 45th President’s Inaugural Address “Hitlarian.”

“Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public.

“But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” – President Donald J. Trump, Friday, January 20, 2017, Inaugural Address at The Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.”

.@realDonaldTrump: "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now." #Inauguration #Trump45 #InaugurationDay pic.twitter.com/9sKxC3dEmK

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) January 20, 2017

Many would argue that the National Guard should have already been deployed to Chicago.

Chicago Crime:

There were 762 homicides in the Windy City in 2016 with an average of two murders per day, the most killings in the city for two decades and more than New York and Los Angeles combined. This is the largest spike in homicides in 60 years.

Chicago saw 3,5000 shooting incidents in 2016, 1,100 more shooting incidents than it did in 2015, according to the Chicago Police Department. Many on the political left point to gun control as a solution, but Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.

Chicago police report that there has been a flood of illegal guns into the city. Police recovered 8,300 illegal guns in 2015, up 20 percent from the previous year.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel took aim at President Trump on Monday for the tone of his inaugural address and Trump’s call to reverse the “dangerous” anti-policing sentiments in the country.

“The most important thing you can do is create a relationship between the desk in the Oval Office and the issues at the kitchen table,” Mayor Emanuel said after a ribbon cutting ceremony in Uptown Chicago. “And I don’t think in the kitchen tables of America — and I definitely can tell you on Saturday at the parade — people were not talking about the crowd size on Friday. They were talking about jobs, education, health care, security.”

What the Chicago Mayor doesn’t understand is that millions of Americans in the rust belt and inner cities voted for Trump’s policies to create jobs, provide better education and opportunity, lower the costs of healthcare, and secure the nation from criminal illegal aliens and radical Islamic terrorism.

Instead, this Mayor makes Chicago a sanctuary city, not enforcing laws on the books by refusing to hand over illegal immigrants, who commit crime, to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution establishes that federal laws are supreme over state laws and policy. President Trump has threatened to stop federal funding of cities who do not enforce immigration laws. Case law shows a precedent for a percentage that the Chief Executive may withhold for cities who do not cooperate with federal law. Mayor Emmanuel is running a lawless city and he is not alone.

Sanctuary Cities

There are about 300 jurisdictions that “have been identified by ICE as having a policy that is non-cooperative and obstructs immigration enforcement,” as of August 2016, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Jurisdictions include the States of California, Connecticut, New Mexico and Colorado plus New York City, Dallas, Philadelphia and others.

More than 17,000 detainers were rejected by these jurisdictions over a 19-month period from January 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015. Of these, about 68 percent were issued for individuals with a prior criminal history.

The Obama Administration implemented the new Priority Enforcement Program in July 2015 restricting ICE use of detainers. As a result, fewer criminal aliens have been deported. “A detainer is the primary tool used by ICE to gain custody of criminal aliens for deportation.” Under the Obama Administration, the “catch-and-release” policy has led to preventable U.S. citizen deaths.

“Kate’s Law” has been reintroduced in Congress by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Kate’s Law is named after Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old medical sales representative, who was killed by illegal immigrant Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national and convicted felon (7 convicted felonies), on July 1, 2015 in San Francisco, CA. Lopez-Sanchez was deported to Mexico five times only to return to the U.S. illegally six times. If passed, Kate’s Law would mandate a five year sentence in a federal penitentiary upon conviction for illegal immigrants who reenter the United States after being deported.

Steps to End the Chicago “Carnage”

President Trump’s goal is to lower crime in several ways. One is to increase support for law enforcement to do their jobs with the full support of the federal government with the goal of increasing community relations. Recently, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Loretta Lynch found that the Chicago Police Department found “unconstitutional use of excessive force.”

Former Chicago Superintendent Gary McCarthy believed the investigation’s outcome was “predetermined.”

“The noncompliance of the law is becoming legitimized. And the police are on their heels. We’re reaching a state of lawlessness.” – Former Chicago P.D. Superintendent Gary McCarthy, January 1, 2017, “60 Minutes,” CBS News

Video recording of police and releasing portions of video that does not reveal full encounters plus anti-police rhetoric promoted by Black Lives Matter and indirectly endorsed by President Barack Obama has led to apprehension and discouragement of officers from performing their jobs without hyped scrutiny.

There is also an increase of gang activity and violent behavior by career criminals. Former Superintendent McCarthy told “60 Minutes” that the Police Department knows who the gang leaders are and can apprehend them if given the ability by the federal government.

Poor education and socioeconomic factors contribute to the gang activity. A generational drug problem contributes to the violence.

Chicago and its surrounding area ranked number one in the nation for emergency room visits related to heroin use, according to a recent Roosevelt University study. The majority of heroin-related emergency room visits occurred on Chicago’s west side, home to one out of every four opioid-related hospital admissions in the state of Illinois. There were 2,113 heroin deaths in Illionois from 2013 to 2015; 1,425 of those deaths happened in Chicago. And, overdose deaths go widely under-reported. A majority of the drug epidemic can be traced to Central American and Mexican drug cartels that could be curtailed with the implementation of a border wall, increased ICE officers, surveillance and enforcing federal laws on the books.

Since 2009, 1 in 6 men ages 18-34 are either incarcerated or out of the labor force.

President Trump has vowed to implement school choice policies that will allow parents to choose what schools they want their children to attend in an effort to clean-up the streets and provide opportunity through education. Mr. Trump is also a believer in pro-business policies such as a lower corporate tax rate that will allow U.S. companies to hire more Americans in the inner-city communities for manufacturing and other jobs.

There have been 13 major job announcements by U.S. companies since Mr. Trump’s election, including saving and creating American jobs in inner-cities like Detroit with the auto industry under pressure from the Oval Office to invest in the United States. So far, over 1.2 million jobs have been created and saved and over $62.7 billion has been invested in the country by U.S.-based companies since Trump’s election as 45th President of the United States of America.

Featured Image: Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images