After more than 50 separate shooting incidents over the weekend, authorities in Chicago say they remain hopeful that new approaches to addressing violence will help to curb attacks in coming weeks.
According to the department, there were at least 75 people shot over the four-day holiday weekend, with at least 13 of those cases being investigated as homicides.
Fred Waller, the city’s interim police superintendent, says that officials are working to implement new strategies to help curtail violence, including stressing the importance of weapon recovery.
“Over 40 weapons were recovered (over the weekend),” he said. “Just last night the 8th district got eight weapons from a traffic stop, and charged three or four people.”
Waller says he hopes the department can continue to build on those successes, something that Mayor Brandon Johnson echoed.
“I knew what I was inheriting when I became the mayor of the city of Chicago,” he said. “I knew it.”
Johnson and Waller say they are working on a multi-faceted approach to addressing the root causes of crime in Chicago, and they remain optimistic that those efforts will bear fruit, but some residents say that the public needs to be accountable too.
Local
“The population needs to get with it too,” one Chicago resident told NBC 5.
“More cops, more patrols and more prosecuting and finding the perpetrators,” another added.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly> Chicago Catch-Up newsletter.
While both Johnson and Waller agree that those steps are needed, they also hope to use other longer-term strategies, including offering services for trauma victims.
“It’s not going to be easy. You are not always going to see the improvement before your eyes,” Waller said. “It’s not always going to be as obvious as that. Sometimes improvements are behind the scenes and it’s a slow process, and that’s just the truth of it.”
