More than 60 Chicago Police Department vehicles lined Randolph Street near Michigan Avenue, bumper to bumper, in downtown Chicago Friday night as the CPD grimly braced for a repeat of the flash mob that took over the Loop for three days last weekend. At least 500 teenagers rampaged through the streets and in Millenial Park from Friday to early Monday morning while the police stood by.
Ashley Knutson and her boyfriend were looking for a place to eat when they inadvertently walked into a crowd of teens.
Lori Lightfoot said the violence frenzied teens who we’re destroying Chicago, and decided to attack a young couple walking out of Nordstroms, were just downtown enjoying the city. pic.twitter.com/N1o04rjC61
— 𝔹𝕦𝕕… (@bud_cann) April 19, 2023
A bystander who helped the couple escape the mob, Lenora Dennis, couldn’t believe it.
“In the 45 years, I’ve lived in this city and ALL of the things I’ve seen AND experienced living on every side of this city. Last night was one of the most DISGUSTING, DEPRESSING, RIDICULOUS displays I have ever witnessed,” Dennis wrote on Instagram Sunday night. “I watched a mob of hooligan’s attack and viciously BEAT an interracial couple on Wabash, I watched several, at least 5, police cars drive by while this attack was in progress. I watched teenage children jump on the hoods of people’s cars, smashing windshields and causing several thousands of dollars of property damage.”
She saw four police cars stop in front of the mayhem. “They looked at me, looked at the situation, and then angled the car around me and drove off,” she said.
What orders will the police be operating under this weekend?
Whatever they are, it’s clear that city officials are hoping that an overwhelming show of force will deter the mob from forming.
The department also said it was keeping an eye on social media and keeping in contact with youth outreach groups as the night went on.
“We will continue working alongside our community organizations and leaders to provide safe spaces and alternatives for our youth across the city,” the department said in a statement issued Friday night.
Word has already gone out to young people in Chicago that the party is on!
Here is a tweet from an elected Chicago Alderman with the same flyer that was sent to me https://t.co/uOS490x7Oc
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) April 18, 2023
It appears — finally — that outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot has had the scales fall from her eyes. Actually, since she lost her bid for another term, Lightfoot doesn’t have to coddle the mob or the radical left who are demanding even more lax enforcement of the law.
At a roundtable discussion of black big-city mayors in Washington, D.C., Lightfoot sounded positively born again when it comes to urban violence.
“As Democrats, if we do not speak the truth about violent crime in our cities, we will be the worse for it,” Lightfoot said.
“I come to this conversation as a former federal prosecutor. I come to this as a former defense attorney, I am the sister of a returning resident,” Lightfoot continued. “But I know that there are people in my city that are wreaking havoc every day and need to be off the streets. That’s reality.”
It’s a reality you failed to embrace in 2020 when your city was being looted and torched and you celebrated the demonstrations as “mostly peaceful,” Lori.
“What do we say to, not only the victims of crime, but the people who are terrified about crimes in their neighborhood, most of whom look like us? If we say, ‘yeah, the police department is spending all this time and resources to arrest, put a case on,’ and the judges and the prosecutors say, ‘you know what? We’re going to let you out on electronic monitoring to wreak havoc again.’”
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What’s truly maddening about Lightfoot’s lament is that these policies that put dangerous criminals back on the street are policies that the radical left — the people she courted and catered to in order to get elected — authored and enacted. She defanged the police department when she served in the Office of Professional Standards, siding with criminals against the police in almost every brutality claim.
And now Lightfoot is reaping what she sowed. As is the rest of the radical left who are gazing at the creation of an entire generation who believe they shouldn’t be held accountable because of racism. Nor should they be held accountable if they want to burn, loot, and destroy because, after all, they’re “oppressed.”
These are the lessons the youth of Chicago have learned. And they have learned them well.
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