“Chicago is the murder capital of the world,” Donald Trump declared on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday. Over the Labor Day holiday weekend alone, 58 people were shot in the city – eight of them fatally – in 37 separate incidents. Those grim statistics contribute to the total of 278 murders in the Windy City so far this year.
According to the Chicago’s mayor’s office, that should be counted as some sort of success. Yes, it’s a reduction on 2024’s even bloodier homicide figure, but it remains high enough to put the city on track to be one of the most dangerous in the United States for yet another year. Crime rates in other categories also remain high in Chicago. Motor vehicle theft rates, for example, are almost double what they were in 2019.
Ever since Trump announced his plan to federalise law enforcement in Washington last month – a highly successful measure that, as of Thursday, had resulted in 1,841 arrests and the removal of much urban blight – Chicago has been in the president’s sights. Even before he took over Washington’s police and sent in federal law enforcement and the National Guard, he had repeatedly singled out Chicago as his next target for supplemental policing measures.
This week, however, he intensified the pressure. On Saturday, before the appalling weekend statistics were released, Trump warned JB Pritzker, Illinois’s Democratic Governor, that he had better “straighten it out, FAST, or we’re coming!”
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