Chicago’s criminal class is feeling a little left out these days. They’re envious of all the smash-and-grab looters that are operating out west. So Chicago’s criminals decided to go the looters one better.
In a shocking series of armed robberies throughout the city, thieves have developed new tactics that allow them to hit a dozen or more unsuspecting victims on the street and disappear before the police can scoop them up.
The robbers use stolen cars and hit specific neighborhoods, accosting people and taking their valuables while brandishing automatic weapons in their faces.
One such spree included two armed thieves hitting two discount stores and robbing employees and then stealing wallets and other items from pedestrians on the street,
The police captured one of the crooks by sheer happenstance when a citizen called in a report of two men running from a stolen Kia. But this is a “drop in the bucket,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
In the days before and after those robberies, waves of other stickups were happening around the city, including a driver accosted by rifle-toting teens as he was unloading his car in Bucktown, a woman carjacked at gunpoint in Rogers Park, students walking near DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus and a bar worker mugged after leaving work in the West Loop.
While armed robberies are nothing new in Chicago, a disturbing new pattern has emerged in recent months where crews of robbers — many of them juveniles — toting high-powered weapons go on crime sprees, robbing or carjacking multiple victims in a matter of minutes, often using stolen cars and dressed head to toe in black.
They seem to be constantly one step ahead of authorities. Before police can even respond to one scene, more have popped up, leaving dozens upon dozens of victims in their wake.
“I think everyone is so freaked out, who’s lived in this area for a long time, because of the random and brazen nature of what’s happening right now,” said Rod O’Connor, who has lived in the Humboldt Park area for more than two decades. “I want the next generation of shooters to not become shooters, but the generation right now is what we’re all freaked out about and why I worry about my kid riding her bike two blocks from her house.”
So where are the police when all this is going down? The cops can’t be everywhere at once, and in this case, the robberies are so numerous and happen in a dozen or more neighborhoods that it’s impossible to concentrate police resources to cover the areas being robbed.
Naturally, it’s not a question of juveniles being raised to have no respect for the law or other people. It’s because young people believe “they have no future.”
Jose Pizarro, director of safe streets for the Alliance of Local Social Organizations, believes that the youth of Chicago are being driven by a “feeling of desperation.”
“We have young people who are in survival mode, and the reason they’re in survival mode is because they feel they have nowhere else to go. They feel they have no future,” Pizarro said.
On the contrary, these young people see a future in crime with pretty girls in each arm and enough bling that a blind man can see it. It ain’t rocket science. And the fact that businesses are being driven out of these neighborhoods because people like Mr. Pizarro are excusing their behavior doesn’t seem to register.
Eventually, these kids are going to start killing people for not handing over their valuables quickly enough. What will Mr. Pizarro and other do-gooders say then?
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