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 The violence was widespread in the nation's third-largest city
from Thursday evening through Sunday midnight, police said. There
were 50 separate shooting incidents that left 53 wounded and nine
dead, police said.
Many more people were shot in the early hours of Monday, bringing
the number of wounded to more than 80 and the body count to 14,
according to the Chicago Tribune newspaper.
At a news conference Monday morning, Chicago Police Superintendent
Garry McCarthy called the violence "unacceptable," blaming it in
part on a "proliferation of firearms."
Police said five people were shot by officers, and at least two of
them were killed.
In three of the incidents, the victims had pointed weapons at
officers when they were shot, the Chicago Police Department said in
a statement. A fourth man was shot and seriously wounded by police
after he told them he had a weapon, police said. There were 21
shooting incidents just on Sunday, police said.
McCarthy said gangs and repeated criminal offenders cherish their
weapons and are more likely to engage in gun battles with police
than discard their guns because of lax state and federal laws.
McCarthy has repeatedly called for mandatory minimum sentences for
gun crimes.
"There is more of a sanction from their gangs for losing a weapon
than there is to get arrested with an illegal firearm," McCarthy
said at the press conference Monday. "Something's got to change."
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has also called for tighter controls
on firearms, condemned the shootings.
"This violence is unacceptable wherever it occurs in our city and
all of us need to take a stand," he said in a statement on Monday,
saying that solutions must go beyond policing.
Earlier this year, Emanuel announced a "summer safety" plan that
called for 300 extra police officers to patrol over the Fourth of
July weekend.
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McCarthy said despite the wave of violence over the weekend,
shooting deaths were down year over year through Sunday, with 185 so
far this year compared with 196 through the same period in 2013.
Multiple shootings were reported around the United States over the
holiday weekend. Police in Houston said on Monday that four people
were shot at a dance early Saturday, including a 16-year-old boy who
was critically wounded.
In St. Louis, at least seven people were shot, three of them
fatally, over the weekend, according to police.
And in Indiana, an Indianapolis police officer was killed in a
late-night shootout on Saturday, in one among multiple shootings
reported across Indianapolis over the weekend, according to law
enforcement officials.
(Reporting and writing by Carey Gillam in Kansas City; additional
reporting by Nick Carey in Chicago; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Eric
Beech, Leslie Adler and Eric Walsh)
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