2 Chicago cops shot with rifle in area where gangs increasingly use military-style guns the headline at chicagotribune.com proclaims. Now you’d think that an entire article based on the premise that Windy City gangs are using “high powered rifles,” an article where we learn that the police confiscated a rifle used in a drive-by shooting of cops (albeit plainclothes cops), would reveal the type of rifle used. Yeah. No . . .
In a statement, the Police Department said the shooting took place about 9:10 p.m. Tuesday when “two vehicles pulled up and the occupants began firing shots indiscriminately in the direction of the officers.”
The officers returned fire, but they apparently didn’t hit anyone, the department said.
Their van was riddled with bullet holes, Guglielmi said.
The other two vehicles sped off. One was found near 37th Street and Racine Avenue, less than 2 miles away, and the rifle was recovered nearby, according to sources.
Both cops were wounded, but apparently will recover.
In February, the Tribune reported that gangs in Back of the Yards on the South Side were increasingly using rifles.
Police said that was the only area of the city where rifles styled after AR-15s and AK-47s were regularly used, a menacing new development in the gang fights.
Rifles styled after AR-15’s and AK-47’s or actual AR-15’s and AK-47’s? My guess: AR-15 and AK pistols. Which are far easier to conceal than the full monte versions, and generally less easy to fire accurately than handguns.
At the time, more than 30 shootings believed to have been tied to semi-automatic rifles occurred there and in neighboring Brighton Park over the previous nine months. At least 46 people were shot in those attacks, 13 fatally.
Police suspected the rifles were being passed around by members of four rival Hispanic gangs in the area.
Notice how the Trib’s “contact reporters” sleaze that info.: “Believed to have been tied to semi-automatic rifles.” Unless the bad guys were firing pistol-caliber carbines — which don’t count as “high-powered rifles” in my book — it’s easy enough to collect spent casings and ID whether or not a round was fired from a rifle.
And just in case you don’t think this is an anti “assault weapon” hit piece by the Trib, they immediately chronicle a cop shooting where a rifle wasn’t used.
The last time a Chicago police officer was shot was Nov. 27 in the West Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side. The officer suffered a graze wound to the forehead while police exchanged gunfire with Richard Grimes. Grimes, 33, who police said had just shot his pregnant fiancee in the abdomen, was fatally shot by officers.
The Trib continues to twist and omit facts to promote the idea that you can take the “evil” guns out of the gangs even if you can’t take the gangs out of commission. False! Fake news! Same as it ever was.