Chicago is one of the major cities that has seen an increase in carjackings. I wrote about Washington D.C. stats showing it has at least one carjacking a day.
The Chicago Police Department will expand its carjacking force along with “more cameras and license plate readers” in the city to combat the crime.
Lightfoot took it a step further, though. She blamed remote learning on the carjacking crisis:
“We are seeing an inordinate number of juveniles that are the perpetrators of these carjackings. I think in Chicago we have consistently seen 50% or higher of the people that we are arresting are juveniles,” Lightfoot told reporters.”We started seeing this rise in cases in 2020. And I’ll be frank and say in Chicago there was a correlation we believe between remote learning and the rise in carjackings,” she added. “Having talked to state attorneys who are dealing with these cases in juvenile court and others, a lot of parents went to work during the day thinking their teenagers were logged on for remote learning, only to find something else. And I ask, ‘Is there some new market for stolen cars?’ And unfortunately the answer was no — that for many of these kids, some of whom had no prior involvement in the criminal justice system, this was pure boredom.”
Chicago had 603 carjackings in 2019. It went up to 1,413 in 2020 and 1,850 in 2021.
The Chicago Teachers Union has been the one that kept children out of school most of the time since the spring of 2020. The union demanded Lightfoot apologize to Chicago students.
But is Lightfoot wrong? You see juvenile carjackings more in Democrat states, which have had strict COVID mandates concerning schools and children.
NPR’s article on February 21, 2021, concentrated on Chicago: “Chicago police say juveniles were involved in nearly half of the incidents last year, with the largest group a mix of juveniles and young adults between 15 and 20 years old.”
The article also mentioned Minneapolis’s rise in carjackings with suspects often “between the ages of 11 and 17.”
Then there’s Prince George’s County in Maryland:
So far in 2022, there have been 64 reported carjackings in Prince George’s County with five adult arrests and 14 juvenile arrests. These arrests are in addition to the 86 juvenile arrests in 2021 and 66 adult arrests, up from 77 juvenile arrests in 2020 and 21 juvenile arrests in 2019, according to the police.
But it’s not just carjackings. This AP article, dated December 2020, expanded on juvenile crime in Connecticut:
Connecticut police chiefs on Friday expressed concern about a spike in juvenile crime they believe is related to the coronavirus pandemic, as teens spend more time away from school because of remote learning and canceled after-school activities.Police are seeing an alarming increase in car thefts and robberies involving juveniles, as well as a troubling increase in shootings involving teens and young adults, the police chiefs of New Haven and Waterbury told Gov. Ned Lamont and other administration officials during a video conference discussion about law enforcement issues arising during the pandemic.“We have an issue where a lot of our young folks are not in school,” New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes said. “These are young folks that need that structure … that school provides them. Many of them are making bad decisions. … Every week we’re dealing with robberies and stolen vehicles. We’re dealing with juveniles that are committing robberies. And it’s very concerning.”
Milwaukee, WI: “Since the pandemic has hit and the violence has risen and other kinds of cases, they’re holding more youth in the detention center than ever before.”
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