The agony continues for the people of Chicago, who literally have no place to hide. The violence continued to escalate over the weekend with at least 45 people shot and nine killed.
The most recent fatal shooting happened around 2:50 a.m. Monday, when a 17-year-old boy was shot in the back as he was standing in an alley on the 6400 block of North Hamilton Avenue in West Ridge. Police said he was taken to St. Francis Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Around 2:15 a.m. Monday, a 24-year-old man and a 25-year-old man were sitting in a parked car on the 3400 block of West Carmen Avenue on the cusp of the North Park and Albany Park neighborhoods, when shots were fired. The younger man was shot in the back and the right hand, and was taken to Swedish Hospital in fair condition. The older man was shot in the head, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The body count continues ever upward. July was the most violent month in the city in 28 years. The city has passed 500 homicides and is on track for one of the most violent years since the 1990s.
Needless to say, if you’re outside and exposed, you’re in danger. A 24-year old mail carrier found that out when she was shot while delivering the mail in a violent neighborhood on the city’s south side. She was shot multiple times, apparently caught in the crossfire between two gangs fighting over the same worthless real estate.
She was the second mail carrier shot on that same route. Another carrier was shot and severely wounded last March. A few days after the postal worker was shot, another mail person was hit with a paintball round.
Obviously, the police can’t be everywhere at any given time. But mail carriers and other postal workers in Chicago are threatening to strike unless city officials take note of their concerns.
Chicago postal workers rallied on Friday to demand that city officials address the threat to mail carriers’ safety, The Blaze reported. Mack Julion, president of the Chicago Chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers, advised workers to stop delivering in areas where they feel unsafe.
“Any letter carrier who does not feel safe in any one of these communities then they are not to deliver mail and customers have to pick up their mail,” Julion said. “We are not going to have another situation where the letter carrier is shot down.”
Postal strikes are illegal but could anyone blame them if they refused to brave the shooting gallery Chicago streets have become? Police officers are paid to put themselves in the line of fire. Postal workers are not. Neither are streets and sanitation workers, park district employees, and other city workers who have to work under the constant threat of sudden deadly violence.
Politicians like Mayor Lori Lightfoot are paralyzed, trapped by their own anti-police rhetoric and naive beliefs about crime in Chicago. Many on the city council want to defund and defang the police. And activists want to bring the whole thing down.
The residents, cowering in their houses only want it all to stop.
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