Illinois Governor Planning to Send National Guard Into Chicago
July 17th, 2008Via: NBC5:
As Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Wednesday signed a new law that will put in place tougher penalties for selling guns to minors, he also announced he’s got a new idea to help combat the violence that Chicago is experiencing: he’s talking to the Illinois State Police and the National Guard to see if they could help.
The Chicago Sun-Times depicted Blagojevich as the “new sheriff in town” Thursday morning in its coverage of the governor’s plan to form an “elite tactical team” to help the city fight crime.
“Violent crime in the city of Chicago is out of control,” Blagojevich said at the bill signing ceremony. “I’m offering resources of the state to the city to work in a constructive way with Mayor Daley to do everything we can possibly do to help stop this violence,” said the governor.
The summer of 2008 will be remembered as especially violent. Blagojevich said there’s been a child shot nearly every day since June 26, with 29 Chicago Public School students shot since last fall.
“Twenty-eight of those kids are African-American and Latino. Hard to imagine that that would be acceptable if that were, in fact, the case inother parts of the city or in a middle-class suburb somewhere,” he said. “Something is wrong, and this violence has to stop.”
Bringing in state troopers — even National Guard helicopters to high-crime areas — is still very much in the planning stages.
