Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said it “feels like we’re losing the streets” after another violent summer weekend that saw 32 people shot and nine people killed, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Lightfoot missed this week’s version of “Accountability Monday,” when she summons Police Superintendent
Eddie Johnson and his leadership team to City Hall to hold their feet to the fire. If fatalities and shootings are Lightfoot’s measuring stick, nine dead and 32 shot is not the kind of report card likely to keep Johnson in his job on a long-term basis. “I do continue to have faith in Superintendent Johnson. But it’s not secret that I’m pushing him and his leadership team to do better,” the mayor said.
She added, “We’ve now had a couple of weekends since I became mayor where it feels like we’re losing the streets.” Lightfoot has committed to keeping Johnson through the summer, but has made no promises beyond that. She wants to see how the summer goes. After “flooding the zone” over Memorial Day weekend with 1,200 more police officers and 100 events and youth programs as alternative activities, Lightfoot came away with results tragically similar to previous years. That prompted her to lower the bar, tying Chicago’s never-ending cycle of gang violence to what she called “systemic disinvestment” in South and West Side neighborhoods. “You’re gonna continue to see me linking the issues, not just with law enforcement response, but a more comprehensive response because, until we change the desperate circumstances in communities,” Lightfoot said. Three years ago, an end-run around the police board’s nationwide search for a replacement for fired Police Superintendent. Garry McCarthy allowed Mayor Rahm Emanuel to pluck Johnson out of obscurity, even though Johnson didn’t seek the job.