CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Chicago police said 10 people were shot to death and 53 people wounded in 35 shooting incidents over the weekend in the city and the city’s top cop said it’s not for a lack of trying on the part of Chicago police.
Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said guns are behind most murders in Chicago. An 11th weekend murder was a stabbing, a 42-year old man allegedly stabbed in the neck by his girlfriend on the South Side.
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Brown said police are doing all they can to get illegal guns off the streets at personal risk to their own safety. He said 65 officers have been shot or shot at this year so far, five times more than any other year. He said that breaks down to 10 officers shot and 55 officers shot at, including two this past weekend.
Brown said 52 people were arrested on gun charges and 87 guns taken off the streets this weekend. So far this year, he said, Chicago police have taken 7,470 illegal guns off the streets.
Supt. Brown also expressed frustration that the man charged in a mass shooting that left two people dead on the West Side this weekend has had seven felony charges and was still out on electronic monitoring.
The mass shooting happened in the 100 block of North Pine. Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said a man fired into a crowd of people hitting five people, killing two of them. A concealed carry license holder in the crowd returned fire hitting the gunman.
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Police said 39-year-old Timmy Jordan has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. He's still in the hospital.
Supt. Brown said, "What are we doing? It’s beyond frustrating. It makes your blood boil, if you’re one of those victims," [of Jordan who was out on electronic monitoring].
One thing is certain, the superintendent said, "If Chicago’s going to be safer city, reducing violent crime to historical lows, it will be because of community policing." He said that after announcing a new group of 47 officers is to be trained to become district coordinating officers as CPD expands its Neighborhood Policing Initiative into three more districts: 9th, 10th and 11th districts on the South and West Sides. Brown said they will hit the streets in October, after receiving training as such topics, problem solving, community engagement, and district-specific culture and history emergence.
"The best way to reduce crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place," Brown said. "And you do that through community policing. Getting officers out of their cars and into the barbershops and beauty salons, and churches, and into the living rooms of our neighborhoods where they are assigned, is community policing...Turning strangers into neighbors and neighbors into partners, we work together to make our neighborhoods and city safer, is community policing..."
Supt. Brown also said the CPD's thoughts and prayers for a full recovery go out to the two LA County Sheriff’s Deputies who were ambushed over the weekend.