Photo: Chairwoman of the Chicago Police Board, Lori Lightfoot; source Breitbart.com
Lori Lightfoot, Chairwoman of the Chicago Police Board, reported that the Chicago PD cannot reduce gun violence “by itself” and that help from various federal agencies is necessary, according to an NPR news report.
When asked about what needs to be done to reduce violent crimes and gun violence in Chicago, Lightfoot said “This is not a problem that we’re going to arrest our way out of.”
Is Incarceration The Solution?
Although, if Chicago PD can’t “arrest” it’s way out of the current situation—it could seem like Lightfoot is suggesting the city can “incarcerate” it’s way out, at least in part.
Specifically, Lightfoot said that there needs to be “more federal gun prosecutions in Chicago.”
And it is unclear how increasing “federal gun prosecutions” will mitigate another critical problem Lightfoot described: “We’re dealing with a huge re-entry problem—literally thousands of people coming back from the Illinois Department of Corrections to the same communities that they left, and those communities just don’t have the resources right now to absorb that huge influx of re-entry.”
Lightfoot did not elaborate upon measures that could be taken to solve the “huge re-entry problem” she described.
Chicago: “A State of Crisis”
Yet, in what could seem to be a more conciliatory tone than the police board’s scathing review of the Chicago PD offered last April, Lightfoot addressed not only the current situation—some the history of things as well.
Lightfoot remarked that, “In Chicago, we are in a state of crisis.”
She reaffirmed that she remains “…100 percent convinced that if we don’t take steps in each other’s direction to try to address this strained and fractured relationship” between the community and the Chicago Police Department, then the communities and individuals who need quality policing the most are going to be “further victimized” by failed relations.
Lightfoot also said that Chicago PD “has to take responsibility and ownership” for the problematic relationship between the community and police.
Read an article about the interview from Breitbart News…
Read the NPR interview with Lightfoot…
