Whatever could be the problem in Chicago? It’s probably poverty. Or hunger. Or income inequality. Or privilege. Or maybe global climate change.
For 10 minutes, it seemed like the shooting was everywhere in the South Chicago neighborhood. It started when someone shot and wounded a couple, then two people fired at the shooter, then there was a chase and shots exchanged and a man sitting on a porch was hit. Responding officers kept cutting each other off on their radios as they reported other gunfire in the area late Sunday night and early Monday morning.
Then the heavy equipment rolled in: A helicopter and SUVs packed with lockers of rifles. SWAT teams in green coveralls patrolled the streets with uniformed officers.
It was just one of dozens of shooting scenes across Chicago over the long Fourth of July weekend. In all, at least 82 people were shot, 14 of them fatally, since Thursday afternoon when two woman were shot as they sat outside a two-flat within a block of Garfield Park.
Five of the people were shot by police over 36 hours on Friday and Saturday, including two boys 14 and 16 who were killed when they allegedly refused to drop their guns.
Many of the long weekend’s shootings were on the South Side, clustered in the Englewood, Roseland, Gresham and West Pullman neighborhoods that rank among the most violent in the city.
The victims ranged from the 14-year-boy shot by police in the Old Irving Park neighborhood to a 66-year-old woman grazed in the head as she walked up the steps of her porch on the Far South Side. Most victims were in their late teens and 20s.
Fortunately, there is an answer, and that is the MILITARY OCCUPATION of Chicago.
National Guard needed in city to stem shootings
It is time to call out the National Guard to patrol the streets of certain crime-infested neighborhoods in Chicago where the murder rate is high. It is apparent that the presence of the city’s police force alone is inadequate to deal with this violence.
I suggest that the National Guard be mobilized during every weekend for the rest of the summer. I also suggest imposing a curfew of midnight on weekend nights during the summer on all teenagers in the city except for those with jobs that require them to be out after the curfew.
It is, of course, deplorably racist to express any wish to avoid living among people who cannot be described as being even a little bit savage and merely require a modest military occupation in order to reduce the amount of murderous violence in which they happen to engage for no particular reason at all. All right-thinking people would cheerfully welcome the chance to have their neighborhood occupied by the US military, as that is a very small price to pay for the myriad benefits of diversity.