CPD Supt. Brown said Memorial Day weekend violence stemmed from 'personal conflicts'
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Take a look at these numbers: 50 people were shot over the Memorial Day weekend.
Nine of them were killed and about half of the victims were shot on the city's West Side. CBS 2 Investigator Megan Hickey digs into the staggering stats from the weekend.
Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown blamed the violence on "personal conflicts."
CBS 2 asked Supt. Brown specially about the bloodshed on the West Side and he attributed the problem to people "ending arguments with guns." He believes the focus should be taking those guns off the street.
CPD said it confiscated 75 illegal guns just Monday.
"We cannot police our selves out of this. We've said that time and time again, but it is true."
By Monday morning, Chicago had surpassed our Memorial Day Weekend shooting total from last year.
According to CBS 2's count, 50 people were shot between 5:00 p.m. on Friday and 5:00 a.m. Tuesday morning. Nine of them died of their injuries.
And the gun violence was particularly concentrated on the city's West Side. Five people were in serious condition Sunday after neighbors said a fight broke out on the street outside an elementary school on South Karlov.
Also on Sunday, a man was killed and four others were wounded in a mass shooting in West Humboldt Park. One West Side police district, the 11th, had to respond to both.
"What we saw this weekend is just an example. It solidifies this idea that it isn't enough to just put additional bodies on it. It's a systemic issue."
Yolanda Fields is the executive director of Breakthrough, a Community Development Organization in Garfield Park.
They had success by flooding their neighborhoods with about 60 outreach professionals, but Field acknowledges that there are significant challenges throughout the West Side.
"I think community policing works and the way that we return to that is something that the police can own," Fields said.
For CPD's part, Supt Brown argued we shouldn't focus on the violence this weekend, instead look at the year-over-year data for shootings in that area, which are down.
"The West Side violence: personal conflicts. South Side violence: personal conflicts," Brown said. "These are petty arguments. These are not 'you did something to my life that would cause me to feel like my life was threatened.'"
CBS 2 wanted to fact check Supt. Brown's claims that shootings are down year over year in the 11th district. They're down about 21% to 108 shootings so far this year, compared to 137 shootings last year.
