Who Bears Accountability for Violent Crime, Lori Lightfoot Edition

From the "You Can't Make This Up" Department

I wrote recently about who should bear responsibility of violent crime. I observed that the Washington Post, among numerous other liberal outlets, places the blame on police, police abuses, prosecutors, judges, jails, an overly punitive system, poverty, racism, too many guns, and myriad other “root causes.” Never once did the Post mention my candidate to bear responsibility, namely, the people committing crime and their greed, malice, cruelty and “make-a-quick-buck-and-to-heck-with-everyone-else” view of the world.

I must now confess that I spoke without the benefit of hearing from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Mayor Lightfoot, who was gushingly praised for being Chicago’s first black, gay, female leader (as if your identity can actually help you run a city, or anything else), now tells us the key to lowering crime.

The key is for merchants to stop using money. And no, I am not making this up.

Here’s the story:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that street vendors in an area seeing an increased number of robberies should consider not using cash to conduct transactions.

Hey look people, you wanna buy a hot dog or a soda or a bag of pretzels out there? Use your American Express! What’s the matter with you?

"I heard a lot of rhetoric here, a lot of soundbites, but not a lot of concrete solutions on how we get the job done and make our residents and our workers safe. We’re doing it every single day," Lightfoot said.

Actually, while the number of shootings decreased in Chicago by 20% in 2022 versus 2021, violent crime as a whole increased by 41%. And so far in 2023, robberies in the part of the City that prompted Ms. Lightfoot’s remarks are up by 114% when compared to the same period last year, with 30 robberies taking place this year. So Ms. Lightfoot would appear to be a flagrant and quite specific liar. She might have a chance of getting called out for it if all the country’s newsprint weren’t reserved for George Santos (who is also gay but in the wrong party).

"We have been in Little Village working with those street vendors, understanding what the nature of the crime is, making sure that we’re doing things in concert with them to help them, to make sure that their money is secure. Not use money, if at all possible, using other forms of transactions to carry themselves."

It’s not the behavior of the robber; it’s the behavior of the the rest of us — the people getting robbed. This captures in a nutshell the “thinking” behind “criminal justice reform,” and why, when such “reform” gets pushed on you by some politician or academic “expert,” you need to watch your wallet. Literally.

"We've been in Little Village working with those vendors hand and glove to make sure that they are doing things that they can do to protect themselves like not using cash, making sure that the cash that they do take in is secure," Lightfoot added.

Last I looked, it’s hard to haul a 300 pound safe in a hot dog cart.

The city's crime crisis has even forced the CEO of McDonald's to speak out during a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago in September.

"Everywhere I go, I’m confronted by the same question," Chris Kempczinski said. "‘What’s going on in Chicago?’ There is a general sense out there that our city is in crisis."

The McDonald's CEO said that people need to "face facts" and acknowledge that companies are leaving Chicago in part due to the rising crime in the city.

After Kempczinski made his comments, Lightfoot fired back, saying that he needs to "educate himself."

I don’t know what his education is, but, the way things are in Chicago, what he needs more than an education is a security detail. He can probably afford one. Unfortunately, most of the the City’s residents and merchants can’t.