Last Thursday at 5:45 p.m., two gunmen opened fire on each other inside the Oak Brook Terrace Mall in Oakbrook, Ill. Oak Brook is a quiet suburb of Chicago in DuPage County, and any kind of violence involving guns used to be extremely rare.
But “criminal justice reform” in Chicago has begun to affect nearby suburbs as violent criminals who would normally be kept behind bars because of high bail are let free to continue their criminal activity.
The mall shooting resulted in four injuries, including one of the gunmen.
The three wounded women – including two who were shot in the thigh — were being treated at a hospital late Thursday. A woman in her 20s also fractured her ankle while trying to flee the gunfire, Kruger said.
“This is just a very unfortunate incident that is completely out of character for our area,” the chief told reporters.
The mall, meanwhile, is expected to be open Friday with increased police presence, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Certainly, this took us by surprise,” Oak Brook Village President Gopal Lalmalani told the newspaper. “But our police officers acted quickly and responsibly, and they made whatever arrest that they could.
It’s impossible to say if the policies of Chicago’s radical state’s attorney, Kim Foxx, played a role in the shooting. “This is just a very unfortunate incident that is completely out of character for our area,” Police Chief James Kruger told reporters.
Related: Calls Grow For Chicago State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to Resign After Smollett Verdict
But a Republican commissioner for DuPage County, Peter DiCianni, knows where the blame falls and isn’t shy about letting people know.
“DuPage County is always a county that prides itself that safety is a top priority,” Commissioner Peter DiCianni told Chicago’s WGN-TV. “And a lot of our violent crime has been coming in from the east” – alluding to Cook County, comprised largely of crime-ridden Chicago.
At least DuPage County won't let the shooter bond out…
— John Comfort (@johnmcomfort) December 24, 2021
She’s been referred to as the “non-prosecuting prosecutor” by some local media. but until now her lenient — some would say dangerous — policy of making it easy for criminals (even violent criminals) to be set free with little or no bail harmed only the people in Chicago who were affected by the policy.
“We have a [Cook County] state’s attorney that often does not prosecute the crime as she should,” DiCianni said of Foxx. “I can tell you that these offenders, speaking on behalf of our state’s attorney [in DuPage County], will be fully prosecuted. And we need to send a message that we don’t tolerate this kind of crime in our county.”
DiCianni added that his county’s response to the incident included four different SWAT teams.
No doubt, DiCianni will be labeled a “racist” by criminal justice reformers. And, to be clear, there is no evidence that any policy initiated by Kim Foxx had anything to do with this mall shooting.
But when violence breaks out in places where it was previously unknown, you have to ask why. Pointing the finger at Kim Foxx may be politically expedient, but it’s also a logical and rational outgrowth of policies more concerned with some ill-defined notion of “justice” than with keeping people safe.
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