U.S. News - chicago-police-department

May

2013

5:43am, EDT

10-year-old boy among victims as more than 20 shot on one Chicago day

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By John Newland, Staff Writer, NBC News

A 10-year-old boy was shot Wednesday in Chicago toward the end of a day that saw at least three people slain and 20 others wounded, police and local media said.

The boy was standing on North Waller Avenue just before 8 p.m. when a group of men on a nearby street corner began fighting, said Officer Hector Alfaro, a Chicago Police Department spokesman.

During the melee, one of the men pulled out a handgun and opened fire, Alfaro said.

“I’m assuming he was shooting at the other individuals,” he added. “He wasn’t shooting at the child.”

The boy was wounded in the right buttock and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, Alfaro said. No information about his condition was available early Thursday, though Alfaro said he believed the child was “stable.”

Chicago detectives were continuing their investigation Thursday, and no arrests had been made, Alfaro said.

The city’s first 80-degree day in seven months brought a wave of violence, with an average of one per hour at one point, NBCChicago.com reported.

Three cases were fatal, according to NBCChicago.com:

A man in his 30s was found dead in an alley in the 1900 block of South Drake overnight. After midnight, the first murder of May happened in the South Shore neighborhood where a 27-year-old man was shot in the chest near his home at 68th and Cornell. Neighbors said the man was a father of three.

Another shooting happened in front of the University of Illinois-Chicago police station, where three men were struck around 10:40 p.m. A 19- year-old died. Police said he was a known gang member.

The violence came less than a month after the police department announced that crime in the city had fallen 8 percent in the year’s first quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier, and 15 percent from 2011.

Murders fell by 42 percent in the quarter and shootings by 27 percent, the department said in a news release.

The Austin neighborhood, where the boy was shot, however, saw a rise last year in the numbers of murders and shootings, according to police statistics.

The district, one of 77 in the city of 2.7 million, had 26 murders in 2012, up from 19 the year before, and 116 shootings, up from 98.

Jan

2013

5:23pm, EST

After Hadiya's death, Chicago to put 200 more cops on the street

Two days after a teen who performed at President Obama's inauguration weekend was gunned down, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to yank 200 cops from desk jobs and make them fight crime on the streets. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

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The reassignment was recommended by city officials last week, according to NBC Chicago, but it took on new significance Thursday as 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton became the face of Chicago's stubbornly high murder rate.

The sophomore was shot dead Tuesday while sheltering from the rain with fellow members of the volleyball team in a park near her well-regarded high-school, in an upscale section of Chicago's South Side less than a mile from President Obama's home.

The bullet that struck her upper back was meant for someone else, police said. No arrests have been made, and police increased the reward in the case to $24,000.

“When any young person in our city is gunned down without reason, it demands action from all of us,” Emanuel said at a press conference.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, shown here at a conference on gun violence, is set to announce he will put 200 more cops on the street.

“As we grieve for Hadiya, we need to work together to protect our greatest resource, the children of the city of Chicago.”

Emanuel said when he took office he redeployed 570 officers who were on desk duty and credited that with reducing Chicago’s overall crime rate by 8.5%, even as its murder rate increased.

There were more than 500 slayings in Chicago last year. That's about half the number there were in 1974, but still represented an increase over the previous year at a time when other cities are reporting steady decreases in homicides.

Hopes that 2013 would be less bloody were dashed by a grim statistic: 42 people were killed in Chicago this month, making it the deadliest January in more than a decade, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The death of Pendleton -- a majorette with the King College Prep marching band who traveled to Washington to take part in inauguration festivities -- sparked outrage across the nation.

At the White House, a spokesman said the Obamas were praying for her family. On Capitol Hill, her name was invoked during debate over gun control.

Emanuel said the police have been getting tips about who might have killed Pendleton and wounded a 16-year-old friend – both innocent victims caught in what investigators suspect was a gang-related turf war.

The mayor had a message for anyone with information: “Please step forward. That is what a good neighbor does.”