Chicago is expanding its carjacking task force as residents remain concerned about high violent crime, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Superintendent David Brown announced.
Brown said the task force is currently staffed during two out of three watches but will soon be staffed 24 hours a day with officers focused on arresting carjackers.
An 11-year-old boy was arrested on Jan. 26 by the vehicular carjacking task force after being identified as the person who took a car on 11000 block of South Harding Avenue in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood on Nov. 19, Brown said. “That can’t be the answer,” she said. “It has to be something more. But what also is true, is that there’s got to be accountability.”
Lightfoot said the city saw the rise in cases in 2020 and believed there was a correlation between remote learning and carjackings. She said some parents left to work thinking their kid was attending their virtual classes when in reality they were on the streets. “Every child in our public schools in Chicago deserves an apology from the mayor today, who claimed withthat there was a correlation between remote learning in 2020 and an increase in car-jackings, which have been growing across the nation,” the union said in a statement.