CHICAGO UNDER FIRE SLAIN COP’S SON AMONG WOUNDED
The senseless street violence that stole a father — who was also a Chicago police officer — from a family in 2010 struck them again this week, as the cop’s son was seriously wounded in the latest wave of shootings across the city.
Nearly three years after Chicago Police Officer Michael Bailey was murdered, just as he was on the verge of retiring, his son was in a hospital Wednesday, recovering from a gunshot wound to his side.
“A lot of people are getting shot — it’s terrible, it’s senseless,” said the officer’s widow, Pamela, in a telephone interview from her son’s hospital room.
Michael Bailey Jr., 30, was in a car at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday near 55th and Union in Englewood when someone in another vehicle shot him, police said. Police believe the shooter thought Bailey was in a rival gang, a law enforcement source said.
Across Chicago, three men were killed and at least 15 others were wounded during a nine-hour spree that began Tuesday afternoon.
The officer’s son “doesn’t know who shot him,” his mother said.
In July 2010, her husband, 62-year-old Michael Bailey Sr., was off-duty when he was shot and killed in front of his Park Manor home on the South Side.
Bailey was polishing a Buick he bought to celebrate his police retirement a few weeks away. He had just returned home from guarding the South Loop town home of thenMayor Richard Daley and was still wearing his uniform.
Antwon Carter, a parolee, was charged with the murder. His case is pending.
Pamela Bailey said her daughter, Jada, decided to follow in her father’s footsteps after he was killed. She is a Chicago Police officer, too.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Pamela Bailey said. “But every day she walks out the door, you never know, like her dad. You have to just put it in God’s hands.”
Michael Bailey Jr.’s shooting happened the same day that the Chicago Police Department announced a major decrease in murders and shootings for the year.
Through the end of April, there were 93 murders, compared to 161 over the same period last year — a 42 percent decrease, police said. Nonfatal shootings were down 27 percent.
On Wednesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel addressed the months-long drop in murders and the recent outbreak of warm-weather shootings.
“There are days we’re going to make progress. There are days we are not. On the other hand, are we getting our hands around [crime]?” the mayor said. “There’s one measure I care about. As I met Ms. Jones the other day when we had our foot patrol, she said, ‘I feel now comfortable my child can walk to school.’ That’s the measure I look at every day.”
Emanuel said he’s “satisfied” with the decreases in homicides and nonfatal shootings over the past few months. Still, he said he continually prods his police superintendent, Garry McCarthy.
“While February, March and April [were down], I was on Garry every day: ‘Where are we on our after-school initiatives? How many more kids can we get involved in those programs? How do we challenge parents to get more involved?’” Emanuel said.