CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — After another violent weekend in Chicago, Police Superintendent David Brown said the department is mobilizing a 50-member task force to try to focus on shutting down weapons trafficking.
Last week, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a reward fund for tips leading to the recovery of illegal guns.
Now after another bloody weekend, Brown on Monday announced the new task force he hopes will use some of that money to get people to inform on gun traffickers.
But he said the effort won't just rely on tips.
"Undercover work, human source development, which means working with the community to give us information real-time as well as, you know... we're gonna hit the ground running. So we're gonna need a lot of work from the community. We're gonna need a lot of luck," Brown said during a press conference.
Police recovered 113 guns this past weekend but Brown said this effort is intended to stop the weapons before they hit the streets.
The amount of gun violence in the city this year continues to outpace last year's record level.
Chicago recorded at least 2,254 shootings through July 17, according to the city’s most recent data, up 10.3% from the same time last year, and 60% compared to 2019, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Many victims of these shootings also are getting younger.
This weekend, 10 people were killed and at least 50 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago with seven of the wounded being children ages 15 and younger.
A mass shooting in the Austin community on the West Side late Saturday left six people injured, five of them ages 12 to 19.
About 90 minutes later, an 8-year-old boy was shot in the leg while traveling in a vehicle and a 14-year-old boy was wounded Saturday afternoon when he was shot in the leg while in the parking lot of a gas station.
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