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Chicago Group Hired Gangsters to Be ‘Peacekeepers’ and It’s Working Out Just About the Way You Might Expect

Posted on | May 29, 2023 | Comments Off on Chicago Group Hired Gangsters to Be ‘Peacekeepers’ and It’s Working Out Just About the Way You Might Expect

Remember when President Obama got elected and America’s public schools suddenly became excellent? No, you don’t remember that, because it never happened. The guy Obama appointed as Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is a Harvard-educated liberal who had previously been appointed by the Daley machine as Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, where he worked no miracles, and neither did he do anything during his eight-year tenure as Secretary of Education that anyone remembers as praiseworthy. In 2016, with money from Steve Jobs’ widow, Duncan started a group called Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny). Duncan has said that Chicago CRED “proceeds from the belief that the surest way to stop gun violence is engaging directly with those most at risk of shooting or being shot and giving them a reason to put down their guns”:

Said another way, we believe that the individuals we work with are not the problem — they are the solution. They are the only ones with the experience, relationships, and courage necessary to do the difficult, dangerous work of reaching out to friends, neighbors, and family members and getting them to also stop shooting. . . .
Our comprehensive approach includes street outreach, counseling, life coaching, education, and employment. . . .
Many of our outreach workers and life coaches are slightly older versions of the people caught up in gun violence, so they have their trust and respect. We also give participants a modest paycheck, starting at about $125 per week and rising to about $225 per week over the course of our 12-24-month program as long as they stay involved, attend regularly, and advance through the program. Our goal is to help them transition into the legal economy.

So they’re paying people not to shoot each other, and hey, it’s a “comprehensive approach,” which explains the excellent results!

Chicago’s 2022 homicide rate was 25.8 per 100,000, more than twice as high as Los Angeles (9.9) and five times higher than New York City (5.1). About the best you can say for Chicago is that it’s not as violent as Baltimore, Detroit or Memphis, but does that really qualify as “success”?

If Arne Duncan was just spending Laurene Jobs’ billions on this “comprehensive approach,” it would be no more than a laughable folly, but because Illinois is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party the taxpayers are now footing the bill for Chicago CRED’s “violence prevention” operation, and how’s that working out?

CHICAGO (WLS) — A man who worked to stop gun violence was killed Wednesday in a shooting outside a community outreach center. Chicago police said they are looking for two people involved.
Police said 28-year-old Ronnie Roper was in a South Side parking lot at about 12:16 p.m. when two people walked up and shot him in the head.
The shooting occurred just outside Chicago CRED’s outreach center in the Roseland neighborhood. The victim was a member of that group that works to stop gun violence. . . .
“It has been devastating,” said CRED site manager Necole Muhammad. “The staff is in shock and traumatized. The family is traumatized.”
CRED said Roper was on track to get his high school diploma later this year.
“He was very excited about making sure he brought that into fruition for his family, and because he had individuals that were team him,” Muhammad said.
The group was founded by former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Duncan had just left the center minutes before the shooting.
Duncan released a statement saying, “We lost to gun violence a man who had been with our program for the last nine months. He came to us because he wanted a way out of his life on the streets and had made great progress toward that goal…”
He went on to say in part that this death is a reminder that, “We have so much more work to do to make Chicago a safe city with meaningful opportunities for everyone.”

Way to go, Harvard-educated genius! Maybe you can find the guys who shot Ronnie Roper in the head and pay them not to shoot anyone else — because that’s the “comprehensive approach,” am I right?

Undeterred by this incident, Chicago CRED had big plans for making the city safe this Memorial Day weekend:

If there’s unrest downtown or mass shootings elsewhere in Chicago this Memorial Day holiday — often among the year’s most violent weekends — a special team of 30 “Peacekeepers” wearing yellow vests will be mobilized to help calm things down, state officials said Tuesday.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker authorized funding the anti-violence strategy in 2021 when he signed the Reimagine Public Safety Act, creating the state Office of Firearm Violence Prevention.
More than 500 people have been hired as Peacekeepers, trained to deescalate conflicts in 102 “hot spots” in 14 Chicago communities. . . .
The money for the program in the current budget year — $11 million — is set to increase to $30 million in the next year, according to state records. . . .
In addition to that larger program, the state is spending $750,000 on a “crisis prevention and response unit” of at least 30 specially trained Peacekeepers.
That unit is available 24 hours a day every week to respond to shootings in Chicago and will be active during the Memorial Day weekend, according to DHS, which funds the program.

A key element in the “comprehensive approach” is paying money to convicted criminals as “outreach workers,” and apparently a record that includes attempted murder is no problem in getting hired:

Chicago ‘peacekeeper’ Oscar Montes

A Chicago man wearing a neon yellow “peacekeepers” vest helped a group of people beat and rob a motorist in Little Village on Friday night, according to a Chicago Police Department report. The allegations come after city and state officials lauded the use of “peacekeepers” as a tool they would deploy over the Memorial Day weekend to tamp down violence across the city.
Oscar Montes, 31, was held without bail by Judge Maryam Ahmad on charges of robbery, aggravated battery, and unlawful vehicular invasion Sunday afternoon.
The trouble began around 10:55 p.m. as Chicago police officers saw a large group fighting near 23rd Place and Washtenaw. Additional CPD units were sent to stabilize the situation.
But less than five minutes after officers cleared up from that incident, CPD surveillance officers reported that a group of people had pulled a man from a car and started beating him, a police report said.
A 37-year-old man was pulled from his vehicle by “multiple offenders,” including one wearing a neon vest, a Chicago police spokesperson said Saturday. During Montes’ bail hearing, prosecutor Charles Golaszewski said six or seven men joined Montes in pulling the victim from the driver’s seat.
The group punched and kicked him on the ground. Montes took the victim’s phone and beat the man with it, Golaszewski alleged. Another man took the victim’s wallet before everyone scattered as Chicago cops returned to the scene.
A police surveillance camera recorded the entire attack, Golaszewski said, and officers who reviewed the footage identified a man wearing a yellow vest as one of the attackers.
Police officers searched the area and quickly located Montes walking away from them while removing “a neon ‘peacekeepers’ vest,” according to the CPD arrest report. No other arrests were made.
The victim was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in serious condition with significant injuries to one eye, cuts, bruises, and abrasions. Golaszewski said he suffered a facial fracture, rib fracture, and a left eye injury that has caused partial vision loss. It is unclear if the victim’s vision will fully return.
A CPD officer signed complaints on behalf of the victim, who was “not capable” of signing the papers himself “due to his injuries,” the police report said. . . .
His defense attorney on Sunday said [Montes] has a 14-year-old child and is a certified emergency medical technician. He volunteers “when he can” and goes to church, the lawyer said. But neither the public defender nor Golaszewski mentioned any peacekeeping activities that Montes might have been involved with.
Montes is on parole for a 2012 case in which he pleaded guilty to aggravated discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle. Golaszewski said those allegations stemmed from an incident involving a rival gang member of Montes in Little Village. Court records show Montes was originally charged with attempted murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.
He was released on May 6, 2022, after serving a little more than ten years of a 12-year sentence, according to Illinois Department of Corrections records. State officials are reviewing his parole status in light of the new allegations.

Doing a heckuva job keeping the peace. As of 10 p.m. Sunday, there had been 47 shootings in Chicago this weekend, including 11 fatal shootings, plus another homicide by stabbing. No comment from Arne Duncan.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

 

Category: Chicago, Crime

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