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US Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Said on Friday he had recently become the last Democrat to have an experience too close for the comfort of urban crime.
The 76-year-old senator’s ordeal last weekend prompted David Axelrod, former senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, to call on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a fellow Democrat, to declare a “public safety emergency “in the third largest city in the United States. .
“Last Saturday night,” Durbin told reporters, “My wife and I went out to eat in downtown Chicago with another couple – several couples – and we were driving home on Lake Shore Drive around 10 p.m. Saturday night.
Suddenly, “I heard a popping noise,” Durbin recalls, according to Chicago-based WBBM-TV. “I didn’t know what it was. The driver of the car said, ‘These are gunshots.’ It turned out to be the car next to us.
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“The driver [of the other car] leaned out the window and fired in the air, ”the senator continued. “He might as well have shot us.
“He might as well have shot us.
Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Speaks on Capitol Hill, October 15, 2020.
(Associated press)
“Unfortunately”, he added, “this is what happens too often”.
Durbin and his wife are unharmed. But the senator’s experience came just over two months after a former Democratic colleague – former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer from California – was attacked and stolen from her cell phone in Oakland, Calif.
In the incident, 80-year-old Boxer was pushed in the back as the assailant grabbed her phone and then jumped into a waiting car, according to a social media post from her office in London. ‘era.
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Axelrod’s advice
Reacting to Durbin’s story, former Obama adviser David Axelrod said Chicago mayor Lightfoot should consider doing “what mayors don’t like to do,” according to Chicago-based FOX 32.
David Axelrod
(Getty Images)
Axelrod said Lightfoot had to admit that the gun violence problem in Chicago is “more than we can handle here in city government,” and suggested voters could blame the mayor if the shootings are not effective. resolved before she seeks re-election in 2023.
He advised Lightfoot to form partnerships with local businesses, hire more detectives and encourage more members of the public to come forward as witnesses to help reduce crime, FOX 32 reported.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks in Chicago, July 23, 2020.
(Reuters)
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“We don’t need a single idea, we have to do it all simultaneously,” said Axelrod.
Chicago has seen the number of murders increase 56% in 2020 and has higher numbers this year, according to FBI figures, Axelrod told FOX 32.
In late September, Lightfoot unveiled a $ 16 billion budget plan that calls for increasing police spending to $ 1.9 billion, from $ 1.7 billion this year, the Chicago Tribune reported.
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