Chicago police exchanges gunfire with looters – more than 100 arrested
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Chicago police exchanged gunfire with looters and arrested more than 100 people after crowds swarmed Chicago’s luxury commercial district early Monday, looting stores, smashing windows and clashing with officers for hours, police said.
Police Superintendent David Brown called the outbreak “pure criminality,” and Mayor Lori Lightfoot sought to distance the incident from the “righteous uprising” in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot described it as “deeply painful” and said it had nothing to do with the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. “You have no right to take and destroy the property of others,” she said. “We will not let our city be taken over by criminals and vigilantes, no matter who they are and what they’re doing.”
At least 13 officers were injured, and a security guard and a civilian were struck by gunfire, Brown said.
Social media images showed storefronts bashed in and people fleeing stores with arms full of goods, with much of the action taking place along Michigan Avenue, the upscale commercial district known as the Magnificent Mile.
People were drawn by a number of social media posts encouraging looting in central Chicago after tensions flared following the police shooting of a man with a gun, Brown said.
