The city of Chicago was hit by a wave of looting and destruction last night.
The cause? The Chicago PD shot an armed man after he shot at them.
Police were responding to a call of a man with a firearm in the Englewood area on the South Side of the city. When they arrived the suspect fled. During the chase, he allegedly turned around and fired shots at the police officers who returned fire and hit the suspect. Sounds like a normal night in Chiraq so far. But as the Chicago Tribune reports, there were rumors flying around after the shooting.
Some members of the community had heard a “young person” had been shot, while others were responding to a report that a witness who videotaped the shooting had his phone taken by officers. She said those reports were inaccurate.
That was apparently enough to kick start the riots and looting. The criminals targeted Chicago’s nicest commercial areas and neighborhoods. Hundreds of people rampaged through stores along the Magnificent Mile in the city and in other parts of the downtown, smashing and looting, even shooting at the cops at one point and attacking the police including beaning a cop in the head.
Chicago mayor Admiral Akbar err Lori Lightfoot and Police Superintendent David Brown held a press conference about last night’s violence. During the event, both Brown and Lightfoot talked about how there needs to be consequences for rioters and looters who are arrested, seemingly taking veiled swipes at prosecutor Cook County State’s attorney Kim Foxx:
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At one point ABC 7 reporter Craig Wall asked “it almost sounds as though you’re saying this is — the reason [rioting/looting is happening] is because the courts and the prosecutors were not doing their job, that they were going too easy on the looters from the last time around. Is that what you’re saying?”
As Brown attempted to answer, Lightfoot jumped in, saying “don’t bait us”.
“Craig, let’s be clear. Don’t bait us, okay? No, no, don’t — do not bait us! Do not bait us. This is a serious situation. People are concerned about their safety. Officers are concerned about their safety. So don’t bait us.
What we are saying is as a result of what happened last night, there have to be consequences. We’ve got teams of people that are aggressively out there identifying the people responsible, looking at the plates and we’re gonna bring them to justice. But when we do and we do make those arrests our expectation is that this is going to be treated with the level of seriousness that it should be, period.
Don’t try to bait us, mischaracterize, pit one against the other, we’re not playing that. We are in a serious situation here and we need a serious response. That’s what we’re saying, period.”
Last nights looting and violence had nothing to do with police brutality. It was all about the loot. They were looking for an excuse to “redistribute” some wealth, just like the BLM manifesto says.