Chi-olent night a bloody fright
55 shot, 12 die over Windy City Xmas
Chicago turned into a virtual war zone over the holiday weekend — with 55 people shot, a dozen of them fatally.
The shootings — many of which targeted gangbangers as they were celebrating Christmas with their families — took place between 4:50 p.m. Friday and the same time Monday.
More than a dozen of the victims were in serious or critical condition, the Chicago Tribune reported.
“We had a reprehensible amount of shootings and murders,’’ a furious Police Superin- tendent Eddie Johnson said.
Many, he said, were “deliberate and planned shootings by one gang against another.
“They were targeted knowing fully well that individuals would be at the homes of family and friends celebrating the holidays. This was followed by several acts of retaliation.”
Johnson wants to see gun-toting gangsters get more hard time. He called on legislators to “give judges the autonomy to sentence repeat gun offenders to the upper end of the gun-sentencing range.”
If judges don’t comply, he said, they should be forced to “give us written explanations why.’’
Included in the weekend gunplay were eight shootings that claimed multiple victims.
Most were in neighborhoods “with historical gang conflicts in the South and West sides of Chicago,’’ said Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Chicago PD.
One attack in the East Chatham neighborhood produced a body count of five dead and two wounded. And a shooting in the Austin neighborhood left two dead, the Tribune said.
“Ninety percent of those fatally wounded had gang affiliations, criminal histories, and were preidentified’’ by an algorithm the department uses to identify potential shooters and their victims, Guglielmi said.
So far this year, the Windy City has seen more than 4,000 people shot. More than 700 have died.
Guglielmi said, “While we have promising leads, this unacceptable level of gun violence demonstrates the clear and present need for policymakers to . . . give Chicago the gun-sentencing tools against repeat offenders.’’
By contrast, there have been 1,166 shootings in New York City so far this year, not including the holiday weekend. From Friday to Monday about ten people were shot here, two of them fatally, a source said.