There’s apparently no slowing the violence in Chicago. Another 50-plus people were shot over this past weekend, bringing the total this year to more than 2,600. That figure is rapidly approaching the 2015 overall total of 2,988. Among the most recent victims: Arshell Dennis III, the 19-year-old son of a Chicago police officer who was scheduled to return to college the same day he was killed.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson spent the weekend grieving with the elder Dennis, with whom he patrolled in the 1990s. “Any shooting victim in Chicago is unacceptable,” lamented Johnson. “But this one hits home.”
Johnson also renewed his call for stricter prison sentences for repeat illegal gun offenders. “We need to put something in place that will allow them to sentence these individuals on the high end of the sentencing bar—not give them probation and let them out quickly,” he urged.
