Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a press conference yesterday in the Windy City. Setting the stage for the current topic of discussion, she announced that Chicago Police Officers should expect to have some of their days off canceled in the coming days and weeks. One reporter asked her to comment on the fact that the number of murders in Chicago is about to pass 800, a level not seen in a generation. And there are still more than three weeks left to go in 2021. The Mayor’s response left a lot of people rolling their eyes. After initially admitting that the city was facing “challenging times,” she went on to claim that the rates of all other crimes (presumably besides murder) are “at 25-year lows.” As CWB Chicago was quick to point out, that statement is indisputably not true. So the Mayor is either clueless about what’s actually happening in Chicago or she was simply lying through her teeth.

During a Monday afternoon press conference, Lightfoot told reporters that “this is a very challenging time” as the city surpasses 800 homicides for the year.

Lightfoot went on to claim that every other crime category is at 25-year-lows in Chicago, according to a tweet by Crain’s reporter A.D. Quig. Tribune reporter Gregory Pratt tweeted a similar account of Lightfoot’s claim.

The mayor lied. She didn’t misspeak. She lied. Because she certainly knows the truth.

A reporter for the Chicago Tribune verified that she really said this.

As Chicago approaches potentially 800 homicides and Mayor Lori Lightfoot says other crimes are down.

— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) December 6, 2021

As the linked article goes on to note, Lightfoot’s own police department’s crime statistics records show that sexual assaults are up 27%. Theft and automobile theft are up eighteen and six percent respectively.

Carjackings, which are tracked separately from the theft of parked automobiles, are up by nearly a third. More than 1,250 carjackings were reported by the end of November and they are still taking place. The gangs have been running wild, stealing everything that’s not nailed down and killing people with impunity. So how does the Mayor of the city dare to stand in front of reporters and say that the opposite is true?

Incredibly, this press conference full of blatant lies was taking place on the same day that CBS Chicago reported that at least 9 people had been killed and nearly two dozen others wounded in shootings just over the weekend.

At least nine people are dead and 23 more are wounded in shootings across Chicago over the weekend, including four under the age of 18.

The first homicide of the weekend happened around 8:24 p.m. Friday in the West Chatham neighborhood.

Police said a 44-year-old man was in a verbal dispute with another known man on the porch of the victim’s home on the 10-100 block of West 78th Place. The offender pulled out his gun and shot multiple times at the victim before fleeing the scene.

I fail to understand how the mayor of one of America’s larger cities can stand in front of the press like an American version of Baghdad Bob and declare that things are getting better. (Well, with the exception of almost 800 murders, but let’s not quibble over details.) Things are most assuredly not getting better in Chicago. In fact, they are arguably getting considerably worse. The Mayor’s first job before anything else is to keep the residents of her city safe and maintain law and order. Only the willfully blind could possibly say that Lori Lightfoot is getting that job done. But apparently, there is nobody, including the members of the City Council, who are willing to hold her accountable or do anything markedly different to change this pattern.