(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Chicago’s messy, caustic mayor’s contest has Democrats feuding over crime [1]

[]

Date: 2023-02-08  

While Chicago’s homicide rate is far lower than places like New Orleans, Atlanta and Memphis, it trails New York City and Los Angeles in reducing crime. There were about 100 fewer homicides in Chicago in 2022 than the year before. But the figure remains higher than in 2019 and the sheer volume — nearly 700 last year alone, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab — keeps the issue at the center of voters’ attention.

“People who pick up a gun and wreak havoc in a neighborhood, they need to be locked up. Period, full stop,” Lightfoot said in a wide-ranging interview in her campaign offices a few blocks from City Hall. “But we also want to bring lasting peace, not just temporary peace that dissipates” only to see it resurface again and again. “We’ve been doing that since the ’70s. It’s not working.”

Lightfoot’s administration was criticized for how it responded to Floyd protesters, and she and the City Council have rejected calls from left-leaning activists to “defund the police” and transfer resources to other city agencies. Instead, the mayor has increased funding for police every year she’s been in office.

People confront police officers during a protest over the death of George Floyd in Chicago on May 30, 2020. | Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo

Prominent Democrats like Lightfoot and New York City Mayor Eric Adams — and President Joe Biden — have long rejected the defund rhetoric, but it’s remained a useful label Republicans deploy to put Democrats on the defensive.

“I’m not a defunder and I will never be a defunder,” Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor and police accountability board member, said while noting her support for boosting social services. “You can’t swing so far in a direction that we say the police are irrelevant. That’s not reasonable for a rational place like Chicago.”

But when the questions turned to 2020 and whether the city of Chicago is still haunted by Floyd’s murder, Lightfoot was caught off guard.

“I don’t think we’re ever —” she said, pausing to compose herself. “I don’t think we can ever move on from watching that video knowing that his life was needlessly and brutally taken over a counterfeit $20 bill. We can never come back from that,” she said. “But God forbid —” she added before her voice trailed off.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/08/chicago-mayor-race-00080981

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/