37 shot in Chicago over weekend as ‘enforcement teams’ are deployed

CHICAGO – Five people were killed and at least 32 others were wounded in shootings in Chicago from Friday afternoon to early Monday, a weekend when city, state, county and federal police agencies conducted “targeted enforcement missions” to combat violence on the South and West sides.

The toll was down from the more than 50 people shot each of the last two weekends. But the number was still twice as bad as the same weekend last year when just 18 people were shot, one of them fatally.

With more than 675 homicides recorded so far this year, Chicago could easily surpass 700 homicides before the end of the year for the first time since 1998, according to data kept by the Chicago Tribune.

Violence usually declines during cold weather, but 2016 has been an exception. At least 50 people were killed in January, the deadliest start to a year since at least 2000. The last weekend in October was the deadliest weekend in Chicago in years.

Homicides are up in the city by 54 percent compared to the same period in 2015, and shootings are up 46 percent, according to Tribune data.

On Friday, the Chicago police department announced that teams from the department as well as from the Cook County sheriff’s department, Illinois state police and the FBI were being deployed to three districts: the Gresham District on the South Side, and the Ogden and Austin districts on the West Side.

“We just want to send a clear message to the people perpetrating this gun violence in our communities that we just simply won’t tolerate it,” police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Friday night.