“We’ve seen a major decrease here,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a radical, Democrat-affiliated priest in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, and a former community organizer who worked with Barack Obama in the 1990s. However, Chicagoans must be “very careful that now people don’t kind of lull themselves into a sleep,” he said, according to the Chicago Sun Times.
The toll of 413 dead is down from the 2012 score of 503 dead. Chicago has a population of 2.7 million and has only had Democratic mayors since 1931. By comparison, New York, with more than 8 million, suffered only 333 murders year-to-date as of Sunday. The Big Apple elected Republican Rudy Giuliani in 1993. Giuliani’s successor Michael Bloomberg was also a Republican who went Independent in 2007.
The 2012 slaughter prompted social media users to label Obama’s adopted hometown as “Chiraq,” “Shot-Town” and “Killinois.”
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