Chicago Democrat leader says ‘white liberals’ don’t care about city’s ‘racist’ soft-on-crime policies

On Tuesday, Chicago alderman Raymond Lopez (D) said that the city's policies have emboldened criminals to break the law and the cry for help by the citizens is not being heard by the politicians. 

In an interview with Fox News, Lopez said, "We see the new law and the cash bail, ending the pretrial detainable offenses lists grow. Things like robbery, burglary, arson, assault, even threatening elected officials like myself, do not warrant being held on bond anymore in the state of Illinois, and criminals are taking note they become emboldened."

On Monday, Lopez reposted a video on X which showed two men attacking and robbing another man in the Bucktown part of Chicago. Lopez noted, "Nothing in this video is a detainable offense & no bail required. #Fail." 

In the interview, he said, "Innocent people are being hunted down like prey in the city of Chicago." He continued, "That's exactly what happened to this young man who was just walking home going about his business eating when these two individuals viciously attacked him and the screams the cries for help have gone unanswered and we see this pattern repeat itself time and time again." 

Some members of the city got together on Monday night to host a town hall to discuss the crime and what needed to be done to stop the violence taking place, and no Democrats showed up to listen to the people. Lopez, who is a Democrat, said that "voters are starting to stand up and take notice and realize that when you put people who are socialists or ultra progressives in office as everyone on ... that the town hall was, you wind up with a tone-deaf leadership that doesn't care..."

"Common sense requires us to start standing up and pushing back on the criminality in our neighborhoods," he added. "To start holding people and parents accountable because oftentimes, these are 12 13, 14 year-olds who are engaging in this behavior, such as the arm carjacking that is so rampant in the city of Chicago."

Lopez said he thinks that the "extreme liberal agenda" is racist "because oftentimes the victims of the most heinous crimes by the most by the repeat offenders are those same black and brown residents that the white liberals claim to care about. But truly don't."

According to the Chicago PD, the city has experienced a 29 percent increase in crime complaints in 2023 over 2022, and a 77 percent increase in the last two years with 54,983 complaints. The robbery rate is up 24 percent with 7,272 instances compared to 5,883 in 2022. The motor vehicle theft rate is up 86 percent with 21,160 instances in 2023 compared to 11,403 in 2022.