Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Donald Trump Warns Rahm Emanuel on Soaring Chicago Crime

President-elect Donald Trump said in a Twitter message that Chicago’s mayor must ask for U.S. government help if the city fails to reduce its homicide rate, which hit a 20-year high in 2016.

The city responded that Trump and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had previously spoken and agreed to ways the federal government could help.

“Chicago murder rate is record setting – 4,331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can’t do it he must ask for Federal help!” Trump tweeted.

The president-elect correctly reported crime numbers published by the Chicago Police Department on Sunday, but the figures were not record-setting.

Although up about 60 percent from the previous year, the 762 homicides in 2016 were the highest annual toll since 1996, when there were 796, according to police data.

During the presidential campaign, Trump periodically referred to Chicago, America’s third most populous city, as an example of rising inner-city crime, which ticked up nationally in 2016 after a two-decade downward trend.

As candidate, Trump associated high-crime cities with their Democratic leaders. Emanuel is a former chief of staff to Democratic President Barack Obama.

A spokesman for Emanuel welcomed the prospect of working with Trump once the Republican takes office on Jan. 20, but noted Trump and Emanuel had already spoken on the issue. The two met in New York in December.

“As the president-elect knows from his conversation with the mayor, we agree the federal government has a strong role to play in public safety,” spokesman Adam Collins said in a statement.

Collins said the federal government could help by passing stricter gun laws, improving cooperation between federal and local law enforcement and funding programs for at-risk youth.

“We are heartened he is taking this issue seriously and look forward to working with the new administration,” Collins said.

Chicago has outlined plans to reduce violence, including the scheduled hiring of 970 police officers over the next two years to raise the total to 13,500.

Police in Chicago made more gun arrests in 2016 than in New York and Los Angeles combined, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said on Sunday.

“We will make 2017 a safer year for the city of Chicago,” Johnson told reporters.

Johnson said he would lobby the Illinois legislature to reform sentencing guidelines for repeat gun offenders. Police would also focus on “targeted, data-driven enforcement” and make community policing “a department-wide philosophy,” Johnson said.—Reuters

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.