With the Democratic National Convention just over a year away, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has issued a carjacking alert as crime continues to sweep over the Windy City.
The CPD especially pinpointed a team of four masked men who have committed a string of armed carjackings. Officials say that the crew stole at least seven cars in the last week of April alone, according to ABC 7.
While the number of carjackings decreased by eleven percent in 2021, at 1,600 armed incidents it was still the second highest rate of armed carjackings in twenty years, ABC 7 noted in a separate report.
In 2021, the worst year on record, 1,849 cars were stolen by armed assailants. Already this year, around three hundred such incidents have been reported.
Law enforcement agencies are struggling to address the problem. A month ago the FBI helped bag a crew of armed robbers who are also accused of a number of carjackings when four suspects in their 20s were arrested after the thieves stole a stack of cash with a tracker inside from a Northwest Side 7-Eleven store.
In other news, on Monday, Emanuel Embry, 23, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being arrested last year for carjacking a pregnant woman at gunpoint.
Much of the soaring crime overall in Chicago is plaguing the city’s black communities, a point HBO talk host Bill Maher recently noted on his Real Time show.
“But why isn’t anyone ever talking to — like Chicago, most of the shootings are young black men killing other young black men, is that not correct?” Maher asked during his April 21 episode.
He continued:
Okay, much more than what the cops do. Why doesn’t anybody talk about that? Why aren’t there a hundred giant black celebrities who would have the respect of those people saying, what are you doing to yourselves? Why are you killing each other? … I feel like it’s never addressed.
Still, the epidemic of carjackings — along with the rest of Chicago’s crime rates — continues to worsen and likely helped lead to outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s recent loss of her bid for a second term in office.
Meanwhile, with crime rising out of control, the Windy City is preparing to host the Democratic National Convention starting on August 19 of next year.
The Illinois Review recently noted that costs for special packages for the event have already been announced and range from about $83,000 per package to one million dollars. The lowest special package is an $82,600 donation to the DCCC, for which you get one room at a DCCC-affiliated hotel and two tickets to convention events.
For a one million dollar contribution, donors will get one premium room booking and one preferred room booking at a DCC hotel and ten tickets to events.
The site wryly added, “However, ticket prices do not include a complimentary bullet proof vest or carjacking alarm if you choose to rent a vehicle. In that sense, you’re on your own.”
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