Authorities in Chicago are naming Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a drug kingpin in Mexico, as the city’s Public Enemy No. 1, says the Associated Press. It’s a label first given to gangster Al Capone and one that hasn’t been used since Prohibition. Guzman is singled out for his role as leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which supplies the bulk of narcotics sold in the city, says the Chicago Crime Commission and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“Not since the Chicago Crime Commission’s first Public Enemy No. 1 has any criminal deserved this title more than Joaquin Guzman,” said J.R. Davis, president of 94-year-old Chicago Crime Commission. It was the Chicago Crime Commission that designated Capone Public Enemy No. 1 in 1930. The non-government body that tracks city crime trends called other people public enemies, but Capone was the only one to ever be its No. 1. Unlike Capone, Guzman doesn’t live in Chicago. He lives hundreds of miles away in a mountain hideaway in western Mexico. For all the havoc he creates in the nation’s third-largest city, he ought to be treated as a local Chicago crime boss, said the DEA’s top Chicago official, Jack Riley.