With Chicago, Illinois enduring nearly 3,500 shootings and over 600 homicides this year, one official is seeking the assistance of the United Nations in dealing with the ‘quiet genocide’ of the city’s black community.
Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin traveled to the UN last Thursday and met with the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support Oscar Fernandez-Taranco to discuss the murder rate in Chicago’s African-American community.
“The United Nations has a track record of protecting minority populations,” Boykin told the Chicago Tribune before his meeting. “There was tribal warfare between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Africa, and they deployed peacekeeping troops there to help save those populations and reduce the bloodshed. We have to do something — black people in Chicago make up 30 percent of the population but 80 percent of those who are killed by gun violence.”
Former Chicago police officer Dominick Izzo, who is running for Cook County Sheriff, said Boykin was probably looking for ideas and not likely to override his sheriff or Cook County police supervisor by seeking UN boots on ground.
Boykin was probably speaking metaphorically when describing the killings in Chicago as a genocide, Izzo added.
“This has been going on some time. This is not like an epidemic that just occurred this year only, or in 2016 with our last president,” Izzo told RT.
“I’m talking about whoever the UN would decide to send in,” Boykin had said. “I think that the assistant secretary-general may have some ideas outside of sending in troops. He may have some ideas about how we get to peace in these communities.”
Izzo said the issue is being kept quiet by the community members themselves.
“They are the ones in most need of help but they are scared to get help, or ask for help.The only epidemic, and it makes my blood boil when I hear that term, we have [is] the black-on-black violence,” said Izzo. “The African-American community is at a genocidal rate killing their own. It is not from the police and it is not from any external collective group of people.”
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Izzo said part of the issue is that because of media saturation, the public has become immune to the slaughter.
“When September hit of 2017 and we hit our 500th murder, we flip on the news, we flip on our social media stream and people become numbers and now we just compare numbers. Are we even close to when we were at 600 last year, 500 this year, we are below 700,” Izzo told RT. “These are lives, these are human lives, and unfortunately leadership has failed. They keep voting for their parties, they vote for their charismatic speakers, and they don’t vote for people who could take care of them.”
Some 3,493 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year, and 662 of them have died, according to local news sources.
When President Donald Trump threatened to put the National Guard on the streets of Chicago earlier this year, the idea was met with widespread ridicule. Izzo described it as a “very drastic measure to solve this problem.”
“Basically that’s Trump telling Chicago if you can’t get yourself solve, we will solve this problem for you,” Izzo said.
With a city and suburb population of 5.3 million people, Cook County Sheriff’s Department only has 450 officers on the streets, and the police are handcuffed because of failed leadership, says Izzo.
“Our officers are amazing, who serve with dignity and integrity on the city of Chicago and surrounding suburbs. We are not using them,” he told RT.
