By Dr. Peter Marko Tase
In early May 2019, the newly elected Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, first Black woman and openly gay mayor, and a former federal prosecutor, stated that “For years they’ve said Chicago ain’t ready for reform. Well, get ready, because reform is here.” As Lightfoot delivered her exuberant inauguration speech to a jubilant audience, her discourse was infused with promises of fundamental change – restraining criminal gangs, reducing endemic crime, tailored care for blighted neighborhoods, resolve government corruption.
She pledged to reform the Chicago police department, promising to “continue the hard but essential work of forging partnerships between police officers and the community premised on mutual respect, accountability and a recognition that the destinies of police and community are inextricably intertwined”. Over the last two years, quite the opposite has taken place; organized crime, drug trafficking and vandalism are controlling Chicago’s Western neighborhoods, forcing residents to leave their homes and move to Atlanta, and other large cities. The growing crime rate and rise of drug trafficking in Chicago are the main sources of gang violence and armed clashes occurring in the streets of nearby Milwaukee, that has become a heaven to criminal gangs and is America’s capital of homeless people (citizens with many psychological and addiction problems, coming from all parts of America, that spend their nights on community shelters at the expense of City Government).
The armed brutality and clashes between drug cartels and Chicago Police officers were a constant nightmare for the former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served only for two terms. Emanuel’s surprise exit – although with a robust victory margin – is a symbol of the unworkability of policies that have gone wild on the national stage now that Democratic Joe Biden controls the White House and is imposing a Marxist Government, implementing Socialist Economy upon the highly obedient and freedom loving Americans who continue to support Donald Trump; and doing everything to dismantle the democratic traditions that are deeply ingrained in the American Society.
Emanuel inherited a city with a great economic heritage and ripped the fruits of economic growth in the 1990s.
For Mayor Lightfoot has been a tough time, knowing that shoppers on North Michigan Avenue pay the nation’s highest taxes, metro Chicago has by far the highest percentage of domestic out-migration of any major metropolitan area, and the net outflow in the last decade is 5 percent of its 2010 population. Lightfoot has also actively worked to defund police – coupled with taxpayer dollars spent on police security details protecting public officials – a policy that happens only in cities run by Democratic mayors.
As Chicago (State of Illinois) is battered by crime and one of the largest consumer markets of illicit drugs in the United States, the city spent $17.3 million between 2015 and 2020 to guard “unnamed city officials.” This happened as Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she’s opposed to defunding police while over 400 police officers’ positions were quietly cut during 2020.
As of September 30th, through October 6th, there have been 83 shooting incidents, and are reported 1192 other types of crime including burglary, murder, criminal sexual assault and motor vehicle theft. It is evident that Lightfoot has substantially proved to be a failed public official whose focus is not on how to reduce the crime rate and drug trafficking in her city; her sole priority is to perpetuate inequality, cover up corruption scandals and refuses to embrace the principles and policies upon which America’s greatness has been built.