HUNTER: Forget Windy City, now they're calling bloody Chicago 'Chiraq' (2024)

On Tuesday around 8 a.m., 18-year-old Marquese Simmons stepped outside his home on the south side of Chicago.

Article content

Cops say three males emerged from a black Dodge Charger and hit the teen with enough bullets to ensure the EMTs were pointless.

Simmons was dead at the scene.

No arrests have been made. Another bloody day in the Windy City, another outrage lost in the fog of yet another woke mayor ignoring the reality that Chicago is dying a death of a thousand cuts.

If former mayor Lori Lightfoot was a disaster with her anti-cop, soft-on-crime policies, her replacement, Brandon Johnson, seems determined to march Chicago into the realm of zombie towns like East St. Louis, Illinois and Camden, New Jersey.

Article content

Article content

Poor Chicago has already been hammered with a mind-boggling epidemic of violence and mayhem. Chicago police union chief John Catanzara Jr. was vocal even before Johnson was elected.

“If this guy gets in, we’re going to see an exodus (of police) like we’ve never seen before,” Catanzara told The New York Times in April, warning there would be “blood in the streets” if Johnson won the election.

So far, the newly minted-mayor has proven the former cop correct. Four hundred and twenty-seven homicides as of Thursday speaks volumes.

But it’s not just murder that suggests America’s Second City is becoming a violent, dystopian hellhole.

On Wednesday, a shocking video emerged of a gang of carjackers forcing a driver out of his Audi at gunpoint into the middle of the road. Other drivers just blew past.

Article content

The Audi driver had been trapped by two other vehicles — on a four-lane road. He was dragged out of his car and thrown to the ground. The victim was tied up and left facedown in the middle of the road and the car was stolen.

That all took two minutes. Luckily, no one was injured. On the North Side, eight people were robbed in a 30-minute span.

Yeah, murder is bad but so far in 2023 there has been an 86% hike in motor vehicle thefts over the same period last year. Since 2019, carjackings have exploded by 227%.

Now, the new mayor is pondering soaking the city’s remaining industries and other businesses to pay for his progressive agenda. For their part, the companies have said they will leave town — and take tens of thousands of jobs with them.

Article content

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

In August, a small army of teens reigned terror in the busy and popular Loop area. The new mayor blew off the incident.

Catanzara likened hizzoner to a “permissive parent.”

“The teen takeover on Roosevelt Rd. was not a teen takeover,” Catanzara said on YouTube.

“It was looting. It was mob action. It is in the ordinance, Mr. Mayor. Look it up. It’s also in the state statute. I would hope you’d be familiar with that.

“Nobody is renaming anybody little mini-Al Capones. But they certainly, in many cases, had the same, terrorizing effect that Al Capone had 100 years ago with these teen takeovers, where they think they can do whatever they want with no repercussions, no parental supervision and no accountability — specifically apparent by the mayor’s office in City Hall, who wants to excuse all of this bad behaviour because Chicago has a past.

“So that means: Do whatever the hell you want apparently,” he added.

Welcome to Chicago!

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

Article content