Chicago’s latest feckless Mayor “Let’s Go” Brandon Johnson formulated a new strategy to tamp down the city’s historically horrific violent crime that spikes over the Memorial Day weekend and carries through the summer each year. His plan: dispatch thirty unarmed, yellow-vested “peacekeepers” to high crime neighborhoods to try to, well, keep the peace. Mayor Johnson combined that with fewer overtime hours for actual cops (the ones with with guns) to be on patrol.
Hizzoner, through late last week, claimed his innovative new “safety plan” wouldn’t require any extra overtime from police.
In his first newser after presiding over his first City Council meeting, Mayor Brandon Johnson indicates police officer overtime might not be required this upcoming Memorial Day weekend. @cbschicago pic.twitter.com/51tiCmU3yG
— Dana Kozlov (@DanaCBS2) May 24, 2023
Instead of bucking up for the extra overtime and putting more cops on the streets for what has traditionally been the start of Chicago’s long hot summer of shootings and mayhem, Big Brain Brandon decided to divert $2.5 million of the city’s hard-to-find cash on so-called violence prevention programs.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has announced $2.5 million for violence prevention ahead of Memorial Day weekend. https://t.co/MByYgKafIB pic.twitter.com/bX8g1LaueG
— Block Club Chicago (@BlockClubCHI) May 26, 2023
How did Mayor Brandon’s “public safety plan” work out? Windy City gangs celebrated the relative lack of law enforcement by killing a dozen people and wounding an additional 49. It marked the worst Memorial Day weekend violence in over a decade. Ten people were killed on Saturday alone, marking only the fourth day with 10 or more homicides in Chicago in the past ten years.
Side note on yesterday’s 10 homicides: In our 10+ years of daily tallying, there have been only 3 (now 4) days that have recorded 10 or more homicides:
6/27/20: 10 killed
7/4/20: 11 killed
5/31/20: 18 killed— HeyJackass.com (@w_h_thompson) May 28, 2023
Having only to deal with more yellow-vested peacekeepers and fewer actual police officers, the city’s criminal population has taken up a rousing chant of Let’s go Brandon!
There were a number of highlights during the weekend’s crapshow, but one of the obvious standouts was the “peacekeeper” who helped carjack a man before savagely beating and then robbing him.
From story one at CWB Chicago . . .
A Chicago man wearing a neon yellow “peacekeepers” vest helped a group of people beat and rob a motorist in Little Village on Friday night, according to a Chicago Police Department report. The allegations come after city and state officials lauded the use of “peacekeepers” as a tool they would deploy over the Memorial Day weekend to tamp down violence across the city.
Oscar Montes, 31, was held without bail by Judge Maryam Ahmad on charges of robbery, aggravated battery, and unlawful vehicular invasion Sunday afternoon…
A 37-year-old man was pulled from his vehicle by “multiple offenders,” including one wearing a neon vest, a Chicago police spokesperson said Saturday. During Montes’ bail hearing, prosecutor Charles Golaszewski said six or seven men joined Montes in pulling the victim from the driver’s seat.
The group punched and kicked him on the ground. Montes took the victim’s phone and beat the man with it, Golaszewski alleged. Another man took the victim’s wallet before everyone scattered as Chicago cops returned to the scene.
A police surveillance camera recorded the entire attack, Golaszewski said, and officers who reviewed the footage identified a man wearing a yellow vest as one of the attackers.
Of course, the parolee peacekeeper blamed the his participation in the carjacking on the “stress of the job” even though he had been working exactly one day at keeping the peace. And supporters of hiring felons as peacekeepers were quick to excuse Montes’ actions.
Also from CWB Chicago . . .
After officials said a man wearing a yellow “peacekeeper” vest was among a group of offenders who severely beat and robbed a driver in Little Village on Friday, a proponent of the anti-violence programs argued that the accused man had simply “mishandled the stress” of working as a peacekeeper.
And Chicago’s holiday crime spike took place despite the police instituting unconstitutional bag searches for people entering and leaving Millenium Park and Chicago’s beaches.
In short, Windy City residents and visitors have another long, hot summer ahead of them. But then again, the voters in some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods elected Brandon Johnson and Lori Lightfoot before him. Now they’re living with the consequences of those votes.
