Opinion: Another Holiday Weekend, Another Statistic to Learn From

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

In sunny Chicago, Illinois, on the weekend of Independence Day, 2024, we are told that 109 people were shot, 19 of them fatally.

This of course doesn’t include the always-unknown numbers of people who were shot at but missed, and those who were shot but chose not to seek medical care, and those who were stabbed, slugged, or clubbed, because the gun is the only weapon in which most modern journalists are interested. Statistics of any kind are rarely truly comprehensive.

But still, “109 shot, 19 fatally” is in itself a scary enough number for a four-day weekend in a supposedly civilized city in a supposedly civilized state. The statistic is worthy of note.

The mayor and police chief held a press conference about Chicago’s outrageous violence, as they always do. Mayor Brandon Johnson had some interesting things to say:

“I am urging all of you across the entire city to step up and say, ‘We’ve had enough.’ And I’m hopeful that our ongoing discussions will ensure that our state partners, as well as our federal partners, will swiftly come into the support of the city of Chicago. The city cannot afford to wait any longer.”

Yes. Great idea. Blame the federal government for not helping enough and expect the gunslingers to just stop shooting because you’re appealing to their hearts.

Are liberals really this stupid – or this gullible – or this deeply invested in fantasies?

We can understand hoping for the best in people. We should respect at least the purity of heart of some people who stick to the unfounded optimism that some criminals can be reformed, that some criminals will repent of their wicked ways. It’s not a helpful philosophy, and it has no business in elective office, but perhaps it is a partial indicator of some decency in a layman.

But even so – even the sweetest, rose-colored-glasses type of softies must eventually be able to recognize the simple fact that there is pure evil in the world. No matter what you do, there will always be a lot of people on earth who are just plain vicious, and they are not going to stop doing vicious things, unless you lock them up in a jail cell so that they aren’t free to do any more damage.

For those of us in America’s big cities, who have watched the criminal class in action for a lifetime, one must ask: How can anyone be senseless enough to think that pleading and begging – “appealing to the heart” – will convince a heartless, cold-blooded repeat offender to stop killing?

But we’re not done. There’s more to Mayor Johnson’s quote that’s worth thinking about.

Remember here that we are talking about the mayor of Chicago, the chief executive of the city, who himself is empowered and charged to run the administration of the fourth largest city in the United States.

Brandon Johnson is calling for more resources from the federal government, as if this was primarily a federal problem, requiring federal action.

And guess what kind of resources he’s asking for.

You might expect him to be asking for federal law enforcement support, like FBI gang-fighting resources, organized crime investigators, RICO tools, but no. None of that is on his wish list.

Victims’ assistance.

Yes, Chicago’s communist mayor isn’t asking for crime-fighting assistance.

He just wants “victims’ assistance” to flow in from Washington DC’s endless cornucopia of freshly printed fiat money. He wants the feds to send cash and shrinks, in hope that a bunch of social workers will help the families of the people who have been shot. After they’ve been shot.

Again, there is simply no comprehension of what is really needed.

Like any major city, Chicago needs to do two things to reduce crime: lock up the criminals we have already, and make sure not to lure more criminals here than we already have.

What do we do instead?

The city, county, and state – all three of which have been dominated by Democrats for decades – all refuse to punish the criminals who are here, and they advertise themselves as “sanctuary city, sanctuary county, and sanctuary state” to entice more criminal illegal aliens to move here.

It’s a matter of policy.

We know that it’s not a matter of ability. Our police know how to catch people; they risk their lives doing so, every day. And our prosecutors (the ones who want to) know how to convict people. And our wardens know how to imprison people. So it’s not a lack of ability.

The issue is policy.

Democrat policy – yes, the national Democrat party’s official policy for decades now – is to allow as many killers as possible on the streets, to make our cities as dangerous as possible.

• In state after state, city after city, the Democrats proudly announce that they welcome illegal aliens.
• They announce that they won’t allow shopkeepers or homeowners to defend themselves from criminals.
• They announce that they won’t prosecute individual crimes that involve less than $900 or $1000.
• They announce that they will release anyone they catch – from border jumpers to robbers to rapists to drug dealers to muggers to brawlers – on their own recognizance without having to post a penny in bail.
• They post sentencing rules that allow or encourage judges to release convicted criminals, so they serve minimal prison time, if any at all.
• And whenever they can think of an excuse – the prisons that do have convicts in them are emptied due to “overcrowding” or “fear of a covid outbreak” or “uncomfortable conditions” or “understaffing” or “budget concerns.”

The modern Left will take advantage of any reason, good or bad, reasonable or insane, to further endanger the law-abiding citizenry by setting free the criminal class as fast as possible.

You can read that however you want. You can give their politicians the benefit of the doubt and assume they have good intentions. You can tell yourself that it’s just stupidity or wishful thinking, or you can recognize that it’s a conscious desire to keep the people scared and dependent. Or you can suspect that in fact these politicians are in collusion with the criminal gangs.

It’s probably not all one or the other; it’s most likely a mixture of these issues. Some Democrat politicians live in dreamland; more are fond of the power that a scared populace gives them, and some, certainly, are themselves thoroughly corrupt.

But the fact that it is official Democrat policy to allow violent criminals to dominate our city streets is just the simple truth. It is undeniable.

And this leaves us with only one possible conclusion: If we want safe streets, we must vote Republican, and throw Democrats out of office at every level.

Whether you “like” the Republican candidate or the Democrat candidate isn’t the issue. Whether you agree with one or the other more, whether you trust one or the other more, whether one or the other has a nicer smile, nicer hair, a more attractive family… and all the many superficial reasons that people have for voting for state legislator or congressman or county board member or alderman. None of this really matters as much as the issues.

In our cities, the overwhelming, crippling issue of the day is crime.

And the Democratic party, from top to bottom, whether they even admit it to themselves or not, have thrown themselves in, completely, on the side of the criminals.

Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo