A sign of things to come, police are monitoring liquor & convenient stores.
Chicago police are turning to social media and other alternative methods to try to prevent new gangland murders, after criminal gangs engaged in a four-day killing spree over Memorial Day weekend.
Ten people were killed and 43 were shot in Chicago between Friday and late Monday. Last year, four people were killed in the city over the same weekend. Seventy percent of the shootings this year are gang-related, involving some of the 600 known gang factions, city officials say.
At a press conference Tuesday in Washington Park on Chicago's problematic South Side, Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled several initiatives designed to monitor gang activity and to target businesses, such as liquor and convenience stores, known to be locales that are prone to street violence. Some of the new methods had launched in April; since then, the city has identified 30 businesses as problematic and is fast-tracking them with disciplinary actions that could lead to license revocation.
“We’ve got to get ourselves onto proactive footing," Mayor Emanuel said, singling out liquor stores.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0530/As-gang-warfare-escalates-in-Chicago-can-Facebook-be-a-help