Thread by @BauerJournalism

Chicago Police will hold a press conference about this weekend's violence at 10:30 a.m. I'll live tweet.

Follow for updates and let me know if you have questions.

https://twitter.com/BlockClubCHI/status/1277595293534638082

Supt. David Brown: "As a police officer here or anywhere else in the country, one of the hardest things we'll ever encounter is responding to a fatal crime scene that involves children, especially babies."

Brown: "On Saturday afternoon, a mother and her 20-year-old son were shot ... in Englewood. The mother survived; the baby did not.
"Later that evening, an 8-year-old girl was injured when a stray bullet came through the window of her Englewood home and grazed her on the head."

Brown: A 10-year-old girl was shot in her head in Logan Square and was killed.

Over the weekend, CPD made 22 gun arrests throughout the city "and took 66 guns out of the neighborhoods."

Brown: "Just in the last 6 months, we seized 4,629 illegal guns in the city. This builds off the efforts in recent years as Chicago PD has recovered 10,896 guns in 2019 and 9,659 guns in 2018."

Brown: "As a dad ... I struggle to make sense of the reckless gun violence that continues to take the lives of our young people throughout the city. What I want to talk about are the guns we weren't able to get to on time."

Brown: "The guns and the cowards, these evil bastards behind those guns, that caused the senseless loss of life over the past weekend.
"And our officers are not immune from gun violence. So far in 2020, 16 Chicago Police officers have been fired upon." Four have been hit.

Brown: "We all need to be outraged, all of us, by this violence. This is not just a problem for Englewood or Humboldt Park or any other neighborhood plagued by gun violence. We cannot compartmentalize the violence that is tearing families and communities apart. We are all part...

"of this city; we all see its beauty, and we can no longer turn a blind eye to the violence here. I am pleading: Please help us bring these murderers to justice. We are tapping every resource at our disposal to ensure these killers never have a chance to get their hands on ...

"another gun and take another life."
"... We cannot do this along. We need the help of the entire criminal justice program, our community programs" and community members.

Brown: "The street corner open air drug market is the pipeline to shootings and murders in Chicago. UUW arrests are the precursor to violence in Chicago. Open air drug market arrests are the precursors to violence in Chicago. Electronic monitoring and low bond amounts given to...

"offenders endangers our residents and flies in the face [of] the hard work our police officers" put in every day.

Brown: Last week, a man, Leroy Battle, shot and killed two teen boys. He was previously arrested.

Brown: "I will never accept, never, this level of violence. Never. Someone knows something about the murders. If you have any information, reach out to our detectives. You can also provide information anonymously through CPDTip.com."

Brown: "Silence emboldens, empowers those who continue to terrorize our neighborhoods. Now is the time to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough.' For God's sake, for the sake of Chicago's children, come forward with any information you have to help us solve these crimes."

Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan: "... In order to solve these, we're gonna need the help of everybody ... ."

Deenihan: In Englewood, they're trying to track the car involved in the shooting. "The motive for this particular incident, we believe they were targeting the father of the child. A lot of times he would drive this red vehicle, and that's why they shot into this car."

Deenihan on shooting of 10yo: Members of a gang were "hanging out in that area" and an opposing gang member from almost a block away shot down the alley. They went through a home and hit the girl in her head.
"Once again, it's gang on gang violence. It's outdoors. It's ...

"shooting with a handgun. And the opposing gang, they know who did it. And at this point, we need the information, once again."
Detectives have info on the suspect vehicle(s) and are putting photos and video together.

First Deputy Supt. Anthony Riccio: They've seen "probably hundreds of officers" who have been injured in protests, crime scenes and street confrontations "that we normally wouldn't have seen were it not for this heightened tension ... ."

Riccio: Layered on top of that is officers dealing with the shootings of these children. "It's a pretty significant mental drain on a lot of these officers.
"This weekend, I became aware of several postings on social media from officers who had been dealing with the additional...

"stresses ... . So we're really concerned about that. We're concerned about always their physical wellbeing and sometimes the mental wellbeing gets overlooked. This weekend, I directed all of our command personnel to personally reach out to the officers who have been involved ...

"in these incidents ... . Just check on them, see what they need; basically, what I said is recommend the employee assistance program to these officers. If you think that they really need it, order it."

Brown: "I wish I had time for political banter. I just don't have the luxury given that the open air drug market is the precursor to violence in the city and we need to hold violent offenders" in jail longer.

Brown: "Investment in neighborhoods that have been blighted, that don't have much job opportunity, that don't have much by way of economic development surely is the backdrop. And I would say if you dig further, poverty is a larger issue here as it relates to what happens."

Brown: "Here's what these evil, murdering bastards do on the open air drug markets: They hire young kids that don't have any significant criminal history to be on these corners selling drugs for them and holding the guns and protecting them until they sell their allotment of ...

"drugs and turn it back over to these evil bastard. and they do that because these young people don't have significant criminal histories. And they're young, so when we arrest and clear the corner, they're in jail, out of jail. ... We're left with clearing the corner, because ...

"the corner is whether the violence is centered around because it's so profitable. ... Tens of thousands of dollars are made on these corners every, every day. These masterminds are not on the corner. they got these young people are hand to mouth. They are there because ...

"there's no opportunity in their neighborhood. They are there because of the failures in many other social service opportunities that're just not available to them. That's why they're there; to feed their families. It's a bad choice. Without the help of mentors in my ...

"neighborhood, I would have bene one of these kids. I grew up in a poor neighborhood; I would have been one of these kids."
"They get in the system, but they don't have lengthy records, so UUW arrests is released. It is the method to the madness to have these young people with...

"short criminal histories — they even gave them a nickname, they're called 'shorties' ... . It protects the mastermind and it puts us in the position to arrest young people and put them in the pipeline to prison, which we don't want to do ... . So we're left with this mess as ...

"police officers because of poverty, because of no economic development, because of all the shortcomings in social service" agencies.
Some young people do murder for hire work, and that leads to retaliation.
"This is the complexity of Chicago's violence."

Brown: Chicago can have under 300 murders. "We have to keep violent offenders in jail longer. ... For God's sake, these young people are forced into these situations. Sometimes under duress."

Brown: "Police officers are stuck in the middle. We can't stand by and do nothing. ... We're doing our jobs."

Brown: "... There's an impact of COVID ... . By mid-April, three Chicago cops died from COVID. The shockwaves throughout this department and throughout the country were significant as it relates to, 'What is COVID? Will I take this back home to my family?' So there was a ...

"dropoff in police interactions with people, No. 1. No. 2, because of COVID, our jail populations were affected because of the congregating in the jails. Our jails decided to release more people so they wouldn't be subject to the close quarters of a crowded jail."

Brown: "3, our court systems are based on having juries, and because of COVID we couldn't convene a jury. The criminal justice system shut down except for Chicago cops. We kept working. We kept arresting people. And we kept recovering guns. But everything else came to a stop."

"And these murdering, evil bastards have taken advantage of this, these situations."

Brown: "I'm not into food fights. I know it sounds like I am. I just can't look away ... without advocating for collaboration, a meeting in the middle instead of the extremes of we can't keep any of them in jail; let's keep some of them in jail. Not mass incarceration."

Brown: "Tired cops make mistakes. They do. This is not the time to make mistakes as a cop. ... And I'm responsible for that, the number of hours they work." They didn't do overtime last weekend or Memorial Day weekend.
This weekend, police will have one day off. They'll have ...

"an additional 1,200 cops every day starting Thursday through Sunday. They'll be deployed "throughout our hot spots." They're working with violence interrupters.
"Our endgame is arrest for the precursors to violence. So every day we're gonna be clearing corners, every day ...

"we're gonna be clearing these drug corners to protect young people from violence."
They're pleading with courts to "keep 'em in jail through the weekend."

Brown: "We don't want to arrest these young people from these corners. We don't see that as a significant impact on violence because there's others that will come replace them." It'd be a "revolving door."

Brown: "What we have is that ride to jail with these young people. That time, and Chief Waller brought it up to me a couple weeks ago, we need to start mentoring these young people on that ride to jail. But we have to offer them options. ... If we say, 'Get off the corner and ...

"stop the behavior of selling drugs, carrying a gun,' we have to, as a city, to be able to say, 'And let me introduce you to an option that will help you provide for your family so that you don't see this as the only option.' ... That's beyond policing, but it is policing ... ."

Brown: "This is an immediate impact; this is, like, 'right now' solutions."

Brown: They know where hot spots have been during previous Fourth of July weekends. This one might be different given recent violence and unrest.

Brown declines to answer question about the police union president, saying he doesn't have time for political banter.

Press conference over.