Ella French

 

I’m writing this on about 3 hours of sleep.  Last night I saw the post on Twitter that 2 officers had been shot on the South Side.  Someone then posted the dispatcher call that responded to the shooting.  The call will haunt me for a long time.   It is not often that I am brought to tears anymore, but listening to this call did it.  You can find it easily on Twitter but I will not post it here as I prefer to spare my readers the pain.  Today, Officer French’s photo is on Twitter and it brought me to tears again.  The photo is of her in uniform, beaming, beautiful young smile while she is holding a small dog.  It crossed my mind that this could be my daughter.  Indeed, she was Chicago’s daughter.

A little while later, we learned that 29 year old Ella French had died and her partner was in the ICU at The University of Chicago hospital, struggling to stay alive, having been shot in the shoulder, back and eye.   Apparently, all three of the perpetrators are now in custody.  The incident occurred during a routine traffic stop.

Police Chief David Brown was in Dallas, attending his mother’s funeral and did not respond for several hours before sending out an email.  Mayor Lightfoot made some tepid, perfunctory comments last night, then took to Twitter to immediately begin to spin the narrative:

“Some say we don’t do enough for the police.  Others say we do too much.  All of this must stop.

We have a common enemy: it’s guns and the violence they bring.”

Lightfoot has it precisely backwards.  It’s the thugs and gangs that they’ve unleashed that bring the guns and violence.

Governor Pritzker has, to my knowledge, not bothered to comment but continues to blather on about keeping us safe by vaccine.

We do have a common enemy—it’s the feckless politicians chasing a false narrative and the despicable media that provides the spin.

Since coming into office, the triad of Pritzker, Lightfoot and prosecutor Kim Foxx have done everything in their power to handcuff law enforcement, empower criminals and gangs and turn Chicago into something that resembles Mogadishu rather than the great American city it once was.

Pritzker gleefully signed a criminal reform bill just a few months ago that eliminated cash bail, restricts officers from pursuing suspects, restricts officers from detaining individuals suspected of Class B and C misdemeanors, and allowed anonymous complaints against officers, among other things.  Lightfoot never missed a chance to deflect criticism of her handling of the crime wave in the city by calling for more gun control and pushed away Donald Trump’s offer of federal help.  When young gangbanger Adam Toledo was shot, she restricted the ability of officers to pursue suspects on foot, requiring them to call a supervisor first.  The laxity of Kim Foxx is now legendary.  Charges are dropped about 1/3 of the time and about 30 criminals out on felony bond have gone on to commit violent crimes.   Clueless Police Chief David Brown dissolved the gang crimes unit, among other things.

All of these things and more met young mother Ella French on 63^rd and Bell last night.  It’s on all of you, the entire lot.  It’s not about gun control.  It’s about savage control.  Weekend after weekend, it happens. Over 4^th of July, a University of Chicago student was murdered.  A few days before, a 9 year old girl was shot in the head and killed.  A few weeks ago, a young woman was stabbed to death a few blocks from Sears Tower.  It goes on and on.  Car jackings. Hold ups.  Shootings. And all they’ve done is shackle the police.  

But this started much earlier.  While Officer French was being shot in the face, former president Barack Obama was yukking it up with 700 of his closest friends at Martha’s Vinyard for his 60^th birthday party.  It was Barack that jumped on the Cambridge police for “acting stupidly” when they came upon professor Henry Louis Gates breaking into his own home and asked him for ID.   He famously asserted that if “he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” after the young punk assaulted George Zimmerman and was shot in the altercation.   If you read firearms expert Massad Ayoob’s analysis of the case, you will see that it was a case that should never have been brought against Zimmerman.   Of course the worst affront was hosting BLM representatives in the White House only weeks after they were filmed marching through the streets chanting: “What do we want? Dead cops.  When do we want it? Now,” and “Pigs in a blanket. Fry ‘em like bacon.”  

At every level of government, the police were demonized and criminals empowered.

The media have been willing accomplices in this narrative.  It desperately wanted to crucify the officer that shot and killed little 13 year old gangbanger Adam Toledo, until the bodycam indisputably showed that the officer had used deadly force appropriately and legally on “Little Homicide.”   The wanted another show trial as they had with Officer Van Dyke to buttress their fact-free narrative that police are wantonly targeting minorities for mistreatment.  It had to give up on the Adam Toledo incident.

The murder of French and shooting of her partner is taking this to another level.  My heart aches for Ella’s family and her newborn baby.  

And it aches for this once great city that is rapidly descending into a Mad Max dystopian nightmare, willingly, knowingly and purposefully by Obama, his acolytes, the governor, mayor, and chief prosecutor.  It will soon be past the point of no return.