Democratic Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez said Monday that Mayor Lori Lightfoot “refuses to acknowledge any fault” in the city’s ongoing crime wave and that she has “lost control.”
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“We still have about five weeks left to the year. We are on track to have over 850 homicides in the city of Chicago with no end in sight, no policy to keep people safe and a mayor who refuses, absolutely refuses to acknowledge any fault from her own administration,” Lopez said during an appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
“She likes to say that she is taking on crime as though it’s a public health matter and I tell you that if any doctor treated their patients the way she is treating Chicago in terms of public health they’d be sued for malpractice,” he continued. (RELATED: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Posts Photo Of Herself Maskless At WNBA Game, Appears To Violate Mandates)
The alderman said “nothing has been working” with the mayor’s efforts to combat crime and that she “has lost control of the city.”
Although Lopez acknowledged that Lightfoot “likes to talk tough,” she has not done “absolutely nothing” to fight gang violence and would rather blame retailers for looting and robberies. He claimed that residents of Chicago “feel like they are quite literally under the gun when they walk out of their homes.” Though Lightfoot has suggested the city’s crime wave is a result of “root causes,” Lopez said that does nothing to address the problem of “the here and now,” which he said must include “putting criminals away” for their illegal actions.
“The good people of the city of Chicago are living in fear every day because of her failed policies,” Lopez said. (RELATED: Homicides Have Skyrocketed In These Six Democratic Cities. Black People Are Disproportionately The Victims, Data
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center at Jackson Park on September 28, 2021, in Chicago, Illinois. – The 700-million-dollar project has been six years in the making and the center is scheduled to open in 2025. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Violent crime in Chicago continues to surge. The murder rate in the city has increased 63% from 2019 and 11% from 2020, the Daily Caller previously reported.
Holiday weekends have proven to be particularly bad for gun violence in Chicago. Over the Labor Day weekend, 48 people were shot in the city.
Lightfoot has accused the Chicago police of attempting to “induce an insurrection” of its objection to the city’s vaccine mandate that requires all municipal employees to reveal their vaccination status or undergo semi-weekly testing.