Police focus on seizing guns to combat Chicago gang murders [View all]
Source: Reuters
US | Thu Sep 10, 2015 7:51pm EDT
Police focus on seizing guns to combat Chicago gang murders
HICAGO | BY FIONA ORTIZ
Two Cook County Sheriff's officers reached under trash bins in an alley just before midnight in Chicago's crime-heavy Austin neighborhood, looking for a hidden gun.
"I think I've got it. Yup. Loaded. Make sure to take the bullet out of the chamber," said Officer Steve Bialczak, as he unwrapped a black plastic bag containing a handgun that had been stashed between a stack of boxes and the garbage cans.
Moments earlier on Wednesday, the two officers had stopped a suspected drug dealer at a gas station about three blocks from the alley. In the man's car they found $1,500 cash, half a dozen cellphones and a small amount of marijuana. They confiscated the drugs and let him go after he told them where to find the gun.
The focus on rounding up illegal guns, rather than low-level drug offenders, is an increasing priority for law enforcement in Chicago as murders - almost all of them with firearms and mostly related to gangs - have risen to 304 so far this year, compared with 258 in the same period last year.
[font size=1]
-snip-[/font]
Read more:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/10/us-usa-crime-chicago-guns-idUSKCN0RA2NM20150910