Carjackings Spiking Across Large Swaths Of Chicago
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Large parts of the city have found themselves under attack.
Police on Tuesday night were asking the public to pay special attention if they live or work around where a string of carjackings and robberies are going down.
As CBS2's Charlie De Mar reported, the Lincoln Park neighborhood is among the affected areas. There has been a large cluster of armed robberies and carjacking incidents in the neighborhood- two of them right on streets that go through Oz Park.
West Dickens Avenue runs right to the lion statue at Oz Park. It is also where a coward saw an opportunity to rob someone and steal a car last month.
The same thing happened a few minutes later on Burling Street.
In fact, Chicago Police warned of 12 armed carjackings starting in mid-October up until last week – with a large cluster in Lincoln Park and Lakeview on the North Side.
The carjackings occurred in the Deering (9th), Albany Park (17th), Near North (18th), Town Hall (19th), and Lincoln (20th) district. All five have experienced higher levels of carjackings this year than in years before.
In the 18th District on the Near North Side (most of Lincoln Park, Clybourn Corridor, Old Town, Cabrini-Green, Goose Island, Gold Coast, Magnificent Mile, River North, Streeterville), there has been nearly a 67 percent increase in carjackings since last year.
And in the 9th District on the South and Southwest sides (Chinatown, Bridgeport, Back of the Yards, Canaryville, Fuller Park, McKinley Park, Brighton Park), there have been been 46 carjackings this year - an increase from 24 just a year ago.
The 17th District includes North Park, Ravenswood Manor, Albany Park, Irving Park, and Mayfair. The 19th includes Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, much of Uptown, North Center, Roscoe Village, Lakeview, East Lakeview, and the northern section of Lincoln Park. The 20th includes most of Edgewater and the northern part of Uptown, Andersonville, Bowmanville, Arcadia Ter
Police told us that in most of these incidents, the robbers ran up announced a robbery demanding personal items and car keys. Typically, they have been working of groups of one to four men anywhere from 16-30 years old.
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