Police Supt. David Brown Meets With President Biden At White House Amid Spike In Chicago Violence; New Plan Will Focus On Gun Trafficking
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Chicago Police Supt. David Brown was headed back to Chicago late Monday after meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington to talk about the city's crime problem.
Just this past weekend, 48 people were shot and 11 of them were killed. And on Monday, President Biden and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed to help with a new approach.
As CBS 2's Chris Tye reported Monday, Brown and Mayor Lori Lightfoot had hoped this would be the safest summer Chicago has seen. It is proving to be anything but. We dug in and discovered so far, it is, in fact, the deadliest summer up to this point in a decade.
But the mayor and the superintendent also said we are just days away from a major rollout to stop the gun trade.
"One of the things we discussed was the sense of urgency around violence," Brown said at the White House following his meeting with President Biden.
The summer of 2021 is not the most violent summer in Chicago over the past decade – but it is the most deadly.
CBS 2 dug into crime stats from the start of June through the 4th of July for each of the last 10 years, and we found 2021 has seen the most homicides – with 96 over this first stretch of summer.
That is nearly twice as many as 2011.
But 2011 was overall, a more violent year. There 3,000 cases of violent crime that year - robbery, assault, and homicide combined - compared to just shy of 2,700 this year.
The message from the White House, as Brown put it, was, "We can start the investigative process both on tracing guns, but focus on gun trafficking."
It has been a month since the Department of Justice announced the formation of so-called Strike Teams to target gun violence in cities like Chicago. The mayor says the rollout of the Strike Force program expected any day, and intra-state gun trafficking is what they hope to snuff out.
"Making serious consequences a thing that happens in our cities with gun trafficking," Brown said.
When police retrieve guns committed in crimes in Chicago, it is often from Indiana or the Deep South.
"That pipeline up I-65 is going to be critically important – so Gary, Indianapolis, and beyond," Mayor Lightfoot said. "Making sure that the U.S. Attorneys, ATF, and other federal resources are really focused on stopping gun trafficking will make a world of difference here in the city."
"Staggering" and "sobering" is how Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco described this summer of violence nationally.
At the White House meeting Brown joined three other police chiefs and other elected and community leaders in a meeting with President Biden and Attorney General Garland - including Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser; San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo; Brooklyn Borough President and Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Eric Adams; Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis; Wilmington, Delaware Police Chief Robert Tracy; Newark Police Lt. Anthony Lima; and Community Based Public Safety Collective co-founder Aqeela Sherrills.
Details on how the strike teams will work being kept under wraps, but it is essentially a deeper coordination between authorities in multiple states. It is an effort to work in lock-step to fast track investigations and prosecutions of those trafficking weapons.
Mayor Lightfoot said Monday that she does not feel the need to call in the National Guard over the violence this summer.