Two days after a teen who performed at President Obama’s inauguration weekend was gunned down, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to yank 200 cops from desk jobs and make them fight crime on the streets.
The reassignment was recommended by city officials last week, according to NBC Chicago, but it took on new significance Thursday as 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton became the face of Chicago’s stubbornly high murder rate.
The sophomore was shot dead Tuesday while sheltering from the rain with fellow members of the volleyball team in a park near her well-regarded high-school, in an upscale section of Chicago’s South Side less than a mile from President Obama’s home.
The bullet that struck her upper back was meant for someone else, police said. No arrests have been made, but police offered an $11,000 reward for information leading to her killer.
“When any young person in our city is gunned down without reason, it demands action from all of us,” Emanuel said at a press conference.
“As we grieve for Hadiya, we need to work together to protect our greatest resource, the children of the city of Chicago.”
Emanuel said when he took office he redeployed 570 officers who were on desk duty and credited that with reducing Chicago’s overall crime rate by 8.5%, even as its murder rate increased.
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