Chicago, Illinois – An armed robbery responsible for close to a dozen violent robberies struck during the day on Friday in Wicker Park and Avondale. Chicago police say both robberies happened around 11 a.m. on Friday, about 10 minutes apart.
First, two men got out of a dark sedan and grabbed a 50-year-old woman’s purse as she walked in the 1800 block of North Winchester, a CPD spokesperson said. The purse strap broke, but the robbers couldn’t get it from her before they fled the scene, according to police.
One of the robbers was armed with a handgun according to CWB Chicago.
In both cases, the offenders were described as Black males wearing hoodies and face masks who escaped in a four-door car with a passenger-side window taped up or covered with a garbage bag.
On Friday, Chicago cops spotted the suspect vehicle, a black Kia with a taped-up rear passenger window, at 11:09 a.m., moments after the second robbery, according to police radio transmissions. They followed the vehicle until it reached the Kennedy Expressway.
“After it gets on the expressway, let it go,” a supervisor radioed.
The officers followed those orders, as the Chicago Police pursuit policy requires.
CPD’s pursuit rules, written in August 2020, provide officers with 11 pages of instructions to consider when deciding if a vehicle should be pursued. It says very clearly that the CPD won’t punish any officer for ending a car chase and that they must obey any order from a supervisor to stop following or chasing a suspect.
CWBChicago outlined a string of pursuit terminations last week. Chicago cops terminated pursuits and “follows” of another robbery crew’s vehicle at least five times in the six months between November 2021 and May 2022. That group of offenders is believed to have robbed well over 50 people, often pistol-whipping and sometimes firing shots. Their string of crimes culminated with the brutal shooting and robbery of Dakotah Earley in Lincoln Park on May 6.
