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Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
“We are not going to let this country be invaded!
We will not be stampeded!
We will not capitulate to lawlessness!
This is NOT business as usual.
This is the Trump era!," the Attorney General said.
Comment
The Truth Behind Chicago's Violence.
8/13/18 by: Steve Chapman
The bloodletting in Chicago last weekend, with 74 people shot, 12 fatally, was enough to horrify even locals, who are relatively inured to chronic slaughter at the hands of gun-wielding felons. "Unbelievable," said state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a black Chicago Democrat who went so far as to call on President Donald Trump for help.
The shock was also evident beyond Chicago. Rudy Giuliani blamed Democrats in general and Mayor Rahm Emanuel in particular. The mayor's legacy, he tweeted, is "more murders in his city than ever before!"
Everywhere, there was agreement that the city's mayhem is out of control and in urgent need of measures to contain it.
But don't believe the hype. There are not, in fact, more murders in Chicago than ever before.
The number of homicides peaked at 920 in 1991. The death toll last year was 674—and that was down 15% from 2016. This year, even with the latest frenzy of shootings, the number of homicides is 25% lower than it was at this point in 2017.
Contrary to popular myth, in terms of violent crime, it is less afflicted than a number of large cities, including St. Louis, Baltimore, and New Orleans.
Republicans blame unbroken Democratic control of Chicago for its mayhem.
It's easy to blame the mayor for the persistent bloodshed—and former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who is running against Emanuel in the February election, does not pass up the opportunity.
McCarthy headed the Chicago Police Department from 2011 to 2015, and he claims credit for the improvement that occurred in that period.
But he was also in charge of Chicago police when an officer shot and killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald—a gross overreaction that police labored to cover up.
The spike in murders began just after the release of dashcam video showing the victim walking away from police before being riddled with bullets. The revelation, which contradicted official accounts, sparked public outrage, particularly among African-Americans.
One problem in Chicago is the dismally low number of homicides that police are able to solve—about 1 in 6. But the department's poor reputation among many of the people most at risk discourages the sort of cooperation from citizens that cops need to catch the killers.
The city's record of failing to discipline officers who resort to unjustified lethal force is corrosive.
Last year, WBEZ reported that since 2007, the city's Independent Police Review Authority had "investigated police shootings that have killed at least 130 people and injured 285 others"—and "found officers at fault in just two of those cases, both off-duty" incidents.
The Chicago Reporter provided additional evidence. "From 2012 to 2015, the city spent more than $263 million on settlements, judgments and outside legal counsel for police misconduct," it found.
If police want more help from the communities they serve, this is not the way to get it.
Despite these failures, the decline in homicides suggests that the city and the department are doing something right. But what that might be is hard to determine with any confidence.
The fight against crime can't be restricted to more or better policing.
Chicago's crime problem is concentrated in a small number of poor, blighted, mostly black neighborhoods.
Those areas owe their plight largely to a sordid history of systemic, deliberate racial discrimination and violence, endemic poverty, and official neglect over decades.
The conditions that breed rampant crime in parts of Chicago came about not by accident but by policy. The recent attention shows that people here and elsewhere care about the violence.
But do they care about fixing the causes?
Mexico’s incoming leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, reportedly gave his interior minister-designate “carte blanche” to consider eliminating drug penalties in a counterintuitive bid to reduce drug-linked violence.
“I don’t have a specific policy announcement on that front,” Sanders said at the daily White House press briefing. “However, I can say that we would not support the legalization of all drugs anywhere and certainly wouldn’t want to do anything that would allow more drugs to come into this country!”
Lopez Obrador’s incoming interior minister, Olga Sanchez Cordero, said Tuesday she will have broad leeway to review Mexico’s drug policies.
Legalization would only shift mass violence from Mexico to the United States.
Amer Sinan Alhaggagi, 23, of Oakland, pleaded guilty to trying to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, possession of device-making equipment and identity theft, said officials of the state’s Department of Justice.
Authorities arrested Alhaggagi in November 2016 after he bought clothes online with a phony credit card, but he was held so federal authorities could continue to investigate him, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Alhaggagin, an Oakland man accused of plotting bomb attacks inspired by ISIS in San Francisco and the East Bay pleaded guilty to several felony charges despite claims by his attorneys that he has no affiliation with terrorists.
Alhaggagi allegedly opened several Twitter and Facebook accounts in 2016 for ISIS supporters. He then allegedly told an undercover FBI agent that he wanted to kill 10,000 people in the Bay Area with bombs and rat-poison-laced cocaine, the Chronicle reported, citing court documents.
Yep, folks ISIS is still a threat.
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