CHICAGO, IL – If you live in the Windy City, you’re used to the daily reports of shootings and murders citywide. So far, in 2020 there have been 4,000 shootings citywide since January 1st. The Chigaco Tribune reports 4,005 people have been shot in Chicago including 744 shooting deaths.
As violence continues in Chicago, so does the COVID-19 outbreak. In Cook County, Illinois, a county that encompasses the city of Chicago and the greater Chicago region, 7,000 people have died from COVID-19, about three-quarters of those in Chicago.
In Chicago, your chance of being shot at while walking in the streets is nearly as high as dying from COVID-19.
Lightfoot blames COVID-19 for the surge in shootings and killings in 2020, blaming a “perfect storm” of events that have contributed to the violence.
“The underlying root causes of violence — and that’s poverty, lack of hope, despair, not enough access to the things that we know build healthy and strong families and communities — those challenges remain and are being kind of compressed,” Lightfoot said. ““We have to do better, the status quo, obviously, is not working. We all have to dig down deeper.”
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