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Two Democrat lawmakers, one from Philadelphia and the other from Chicago, were robbed this week.
Illinois Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford and her husband were carjacked Tuesday evening in Chicago.
“Lightford, a Democrat from Maywood, and her husband were in a black Mercedes SUV and were in the near west suburb to drop off a friend, according to Broadview police Chief Thomas Mills,” the Chicago Tribune reported.
“Three masked individuals in a Dodge Durango SUV blocked the couple’s Mercedes in the 2000 block of South 20th Avenue about 9:45 p.m. The suspects ordered Lightford and her husband, who was driving, out of the Mercedes, said Mills. The suspects drove off in the Mercedes and the Durango, police said.”
“They had guns at her! All three of them had a gun and was pointing guns at her and at her husband,” a witness, Cynthia Boyd, later told local station WLS.
“She was saying, ‘Don’t shoot my husband, please don’t shoot my husband. Take whatever you want.’ So they took her purse, and they took the car, and everything that was in the car, and they took off.”
Luckily for Lightford and her husband, the vehicle was reportedly recovered by authorities, though the suspects still remain on the loose.
Lightford is a staunch advocate of defunding the police by any means, regardless of the consequences.
In an op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune at the start of the year, she defended state lawmakers’ decision to pass “a sweeping overall of the state’s criminal justice system that would end cash bail,” among other things.
“I’ve seen misguided criticism that we are eliminating cash bail too fast. It’s a two-year phase-in. Two years. How much bureaucratic foot-dragging did they want?” she wrote.
“But for Black and brown families in Black and brown communities there is a racial timeline of events that stretches back decades— punctuated by events that happen in a flash, as illustrated by George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, all 8 minutes and 46 seconds of it captured on video. While the naysayers whine that the pace of change is too fast, those living in our minority communities wonder what took so long.”
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon was carjacked in FDR Park late Wednesday by two armed men, according to local station WPVI.
“The carjacking happened around 2:45 p.m. on the 1900 block of Pattison Avenue in FDR Park after a tour including members of Congress,” the station reported.
“Police say Scanlon and her staffer were walking to her parked vehicle when they were approached by two armed men driving a dark-colored SUV. The men demanded the keys to her vehicle, police say. They took off with her blue 2017 Acura MDX.”
Inside the vehicle were a personal cellphone, a government-issue cellphone, a pursue and the congresswoman’s ID.
Moments ago @RepMGS left South Detectives after she was carjacked at gunpoint in broad daylight at FDR park. Along with her car , her govt ID & cell phone were also taken. She was returning to her car after a tour at the park. @6abc pic.twitter.com/WdHZKlX7x6
— Annie McCormick (@6abcAnnie) December 22, 2021
Luckily for her, local authorities working in conjunction with the FBI located her vehicle at a mall about 30 minutes away. Five occupants were reportedly apprehended.
It’s not clear whether the FBI would have been involved had an average everyday American been carjacked versus a Democrat lawmaker.
What’s known is that Scanlon is a loud advocate of the police reform bills that emerged after the George Floyd riots in 2020.
For instance, she’s one of the sponsors of the Mental Health Justice Act, a bill that “creates a grant program for states and local governments to train and dispatch mental health professionals to respond, instead of law enforcement officers, to emergencies that involve people with behavioral health needs.”
When the bill was unveiled in February, The Hill reported that Democrats’ goal was “to make it easier for state and local governments to defund the police by instead funding mental health services and empowering them to respond to emergency calls instead of armed officers.”
Philadelphia and Chicago are two of dozens of blue cities that have transformed into a veritable gangster’s paradise in recent years.
We have seen too many lives taken and communities devastated by police brutality and racial profiling. Action is long overdue. @HouseDemocrats are fighting for REAL reform in our country’s police departments. #JusticeInPolicing pic.twitter.com/IS9n6LZXCg
— Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (@RepMGS) June 8, 2020
In Chicago, local authorities blame the crime wave on the lax-on-crime policies that were instituted following the 2020 riots, including the elimination of bail.
“Law-enforcement officials in Chicago say judges need to stop releasing accused violent offenders before their trials to help stem a surge in violent crime,” The Wall Street Journal reported over the summer.
“Proponents of bail reform, a plank of a broader progressive criminal-justice platform, hope to reduce prison populations and allow suspects who can’t afford cash bail to be released. Advocates say that the number of crimes committed by these suspects is too small to account for the rise in crime. Police officers and other critics say the project has made the streets less safe.”
What happened to Lightford and Scanlon this week suggests that the authorities are right …
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