Is behavioral therapy the answer to violence in Chicago?
Reaction from Fox News contributor Gianno Caldwell.
Chicago's top cop stood side-by-side with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to deliver a message to the residents of their city in the midst of another bloody weekend: "Step up."
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said no arrests have been made yet in the flurry of weekend shootings, which he said were not random, and were "fueled by gang conflicts." Instead, after 11 people were killed and 70 were shot in ongoing violence, Johnson said the onus was on the communities to take responsibility.
"As neighborhoods, we can do better," Johnson said at a news conference, adding he and Emanuel are always held accountable. But, Johnson said, there is a lack of accountability in the communities plagued by violence.
"I hear people holding us accountable all the time but I never hear people saying 'these individuals out here on the street need to stop pulling the trigger.' I never hear that," Johnson said. "It’s the same individuals that continually commit those crimes. Where is the accountability for them?"
In this Sunday, Aug. 5, 2018 photo, evidence markers sit on the ground at the scene where a boy was killed after being shot in the abdomen while riding his bike in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP)
Johnson said the weekend's violence was focused in four of the city's 22 police districts, on Chicago's West and South Sides, in areas where street gangs are entrenched.
"The city isn't on fire, we just have to do what we have to do in those challenged areas to make it better," he said.
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Johnson, who became commissioner in 2016, said he made the commitment to make the department better, particularly repairing relationships with the black community. But, he said, police can't do it alone and officers need the community's help to solve continued violence.
In this Sunday, Aug. 5, 2018 photo, evidence markers sit on the ground at the scene where a boy was killed after being shot in the abdomen while riding his bike in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP)
"CPD is only as good as the faith the community has in it," he said. "Every socitial ill simply can't be placed at the doorstep and expect police to fix that. It's not about what the police department can do, it's about what you should do."
Emanuel, an ex-chief of staff to former president Barack Obama and a noted top critic of President Trump who has boasted the Windy City as a sanctuary city status and need for more gun restrictions to clamp down on crime, echoed Johnson's appeal to violence-plagued neighborhoods to step up.
"If you know who did this, be a neighbor, speak up," Emanuel said, adding that people living in these neighborhoods know who is committing the violence and need to take back their communities. The mayor added that people who live in neighborhoods where the shootings occurred have to be willing to name potential suspects.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that the city's communities need to "step up" to combat ongoing violence. (Fox News)
"All of us know that this is not Chicago, what we saw," he told reporters. All of us who love the city and call it home have the responsibility to deal our neighborhoods."
Police have said so far this year violent crime has declined overall in Chicago, with a 20 percent reduction of murders so far in 2018. Still, anti-violence protesters have blocked highways to voice their outrage.
In this Sunday, Aug. 5, 2018 photo, a man wipes his eyes outside the Stroger Hospital in Chicago, after leaving the emergency room due to overwhelming crowds of family and friends of shooting victims. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune via AP)
Johnson said that the city's residents should be able to gather outside to enjoy block parties without having to worry about being gunned down.
"My relatives, people I grew up with in the city call me all the time," he said. "What worries me is in certain areas of the city we begin to normalize these things."
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The Windy City ended 2017 with fewer homicides, 650, than 2016, when there were 771. Although the drop was significant, it exceeded the combined number of killings in New York City and Los Angeles, which are the two U.S. cities bigger than Chicago.
In this Sunday, Aug. 5, 2018 photo, dozens of people, who were forced outside or asked to leave, from the Stroger Hospital emergency waiting room area in Chicago, due to overwhelming crowds. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune via AP)
The city's gun violence has drawn widespread attention, including from Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who blamed the problem on Chicago's longtime "Democratic rule" in a series of tweets on Sunday and Monday.
The former New York City mayor also tweeted his support for Chicago's former superintendent, Garry McCarthy, referring to him as "Jerry" and calling him a "policing genius."
"Chicago murders are direct result of one party Democratic rule for decades. Policing genius Jerry McCarthy can do for Chicago what I did for NYC. He was one of the architects of Compstat. Slashed homicides over 70%. Tens of thousands of lives saved," Giuliani tweeted.
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McCarthy announced this year he plans to run for mayor next February against Emanuel, who fired McCarthy in 2015 after the release of dashcam video showing a white police officer shoot a black teenager 16 times.
Misspelling Emanuel's last name, Giuliani tweeted: "He can do a lot better than Mayor Emmanuel who is fiddling while Chicago burns."
Fox News’ Katherine Lam and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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