It’s a criminal’s paradise in downtown Chicago these days. With a shortage of officers and the soft-on-crime tactic coming from the Democrat-led city, brazen robbers are fanning out to rob, carjack and steal whatever they can while they can’t be caught. Just last week, Chicago’s Police Superintendent David Brown said violent offenders needed top consequences in the city’s courts with longer jail time.
Last Saturday, a crew of robbers described as two to four males, African-American, 16-30 years old, wearing dark and red hooded sweatshirts, red and black skull caps, and surgical masks struck in downtown Chicago and then again on Tuesday. That wasn’t enough for these armed robbers. They stuck again on Thursday night:
It took less than 45 minutes for a team of armed assailants to rob ten people in seven separate incidents across River North, Old Town, and the Near North Side on Thursday evening, police said. The offenders appear to be the same crew that struck the same area five times in under an hour on Tuesday evening.
Another robbery involving four victims took place in the Fulton River District of downtown Chicago. Four men were robbed by several armed men on the 400 block of North Milwaukee in downtown Chicago. The armed men fled in the same Ford Fusion that was used in the other crimes.
Multiple police reports say the robbers brazenly held up the victims at gunpoint and escaped in a stolen four-door green Ford Fusion with a license plate beginning with BL636. One of the victims described the robbery saying, “They stop the vehicle right next to you, and they open the door and jump out of the vehicle so fast, you can’t even react.”
According to CWB Chicago, Thursday’s crime spree began around 10:30 p.m. when the offenders robbed a 25-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman at gunpoint on the first block of West Superior, said Officer Ronald Westbrooks, a CPD spokesperson. Five minutes later, they robbed a man sitting in his car on the 800 block of North Sedgwick. They took the man’s phone and headphones at gunpoint, Westbrooks said. The victim’s age was not immediately available. At 10:40 p.m., they confronted two 19-year-old men walking on the 300 block of West Huron and took the victims’ phones. Then they robbed a woman of her backpack on the 900 block of North Franklin around 10:45 p.m., Westbrooks said. Five minutes later, they took a 22-year-old man’s keys, wallet, and phone at gunpoint in the 200 block of West Schiller. They robbed a 35-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman at gunpoint as the victims walked on the 600 block of North Kingsbury around 11;10 p.m. Within a minute or two of that, they robbed a 24-year-old man of a bag containing his valuables on the 200 block of West Ontario, according to Westbrooks.