As the Left Pushes To Defund Police, Here's a Look into Chicago's Deadly Weekend
Forget about “Black Lives Matter” or even “all lives matter” — for leftists, lives only matter when it’s politically expedient to say they do.
When George Floyd died after a police officer placed a knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis last month, his death was protested, publicly lamented and mourned by members of Congress who genuflected for a moment of silence.
But there was no protesting or kneeling for the 345,672 abortions Planned Parenthood reported last year.
And even now, as cities smolder in the aftermath of chaos and destruction from violent protests in Floyd’s name, leftist politicians are silent about the bloodshed in cities like Chicago.
During the last weekend of May alone, 25 people were shot and killed and another 85 wounded in Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, and the weekend prior was the deadliest Memorial Day weekend in four years for the city.
Eighteen of those deaths came on Sunday, May 31, alone, according to tracking data, making it the single bloodiest day in over 60 years, according to data from the University of Chicago Crime Lab. In total, the weekend was the deadliest in the city’s modern history.
Hidden in those statistics is the heartbreaking reality of the lives cut short — a high school student, a father of three shot while paying his cellphone bill and a college freshman with law enforcement aspirations are just some of them.
Among the wounded was a 15 year-old-boy, as well as 18-year-old Teyonna Lofton, a young woman who was shot on the day of her high school graduation party and couldn’t get help despite repeated calls to 911.
“When I needed help, to call the police and stuff, nobody responded. Nobody answered,” Lofton said. “My mom had to come from home, and we had to get to the hospital.”
That weekend, Chicago was embroiled in violence as riots erupted throughout the city, leaving law enforcement resources stretched thin or absent.
“On Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, ‘Hey, there’s no police anywhere, police ain’t doing nothing,’” the Rev. Michael Pfleger said.
“I sat and watched a store looted for over an hour,” he continued. “No police came. I got in my car and drove around to some other places getting looted [and] didn’t see police anywhere.”
Ironically, many of the protests spurred on by George Floyd’s death include calls for police departments to be defunded or completely dismantled.
Democrats such as Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and members of the Minneapolis City Council publicly supported disbanding its police force as currently constituted and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has also cut funding to the New York Police Department.
Clearly, these Democrats are cementing their party’s reputation as the party of crime.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was asked by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt on “Kasie DC” Sunday if she agreed with calls to defund the police, and the Democratic mayor deflected by stating the calls were instead a “desire and demand for resources” and not “[relying] on law enforcement only.”
She mentioned including parks, libraries, schools and social services to make the community safer, although it is unclear how any of those other entities would have saved a life that weekend.
Lightfoot also blamed union contracts, saying she may “announce soon some pretty monumental reforms” in what she called a “long fight around police reform.”
She complained about things such as the current inability to make anonymous reports against police, and promised she’d make sure officers “don’t have so much due process they can’t be held accountable.”
Although Lightfoot wouldn’t go as far as saying she’d defund the police, she essentially promised to redirect resources while insinuating that police are out of control and often escape prosecution.
She said this even as so many in her city were slain by lawless thugs.
“I’m hoping we’re going to announce soon pretty monumental reforms that we push for and we’ve won,” says @ChicagoMayor Lori Lightfoot about policing and unions. “I know it’s going to set the stage for what I know is going to be a long fight around police reform.” pic.twitter.com/iT8K4mk7mQ
— Kasie DC (@KasieDC) June 7, 2020
Other Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and California Sen. Kamala Harris essentially ducked the question but did not denounce the idea, according to Fox News.
The insanity of the left, especially Pelosi and others who took a knee for George Floyd while ignoring the senseless deaths in cities torn apart by riots, was summed up by former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
“Their racist theatrics are sickening,” Kerik tweeted with a clip of Pelosi calling for the moment of silence for Floyd in Emancipation Hall. “Did one of them mention the 18 people slaughtered in Chicago in 24 hours this last weekend?”
“The systematic violent crime and murder happens to be in most of the communities they represent, yet they are diverting the attention elsewhere” he wrote.
Their racist theatrics are sickening. Did one of them mention the 18 people slaughtered in Chicago in 24 hours this last weekend? The systematic violent crime and murder happens to be in most of the communities they represent, yet they are diverting the attention elsewhere. https://t.co/BBtaj5YT5T
— Bernard B. Kerik (@BernardKerik) June 8, 2020
His words are especially poignant against the backdrop of the accompanying video that showed Pelosi and other congressional Democrats in their virtue-signaling spectacle.
Although Democrats are currently using George Floyd’s death as their latest springboard for political posturing, their underlying desire to allow criminals to run amok and ruin cities is nothing new.
It is nice that they acknowledge that some deaths are a tragedy, but they only selectively grieve for whichever corpse will prove most useful at the ballot box.
The choice this November will be as clear as ever: Will the American people choose the party of law and order or the party of chaos and destruction?
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.