NORTH LAWNDALE — Chicago's top cop defended his officers Monday in the wake of a violent Fourth of July weekend that saw scores of people shot, including five by police officers.
Five people were shot by police officers since Friday night, including a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old boy, who both died from their wounds.
At a press conference at the 10th District police station, McCarthy wasted no time rattling off details of the five police-involved shootings and included three other shootings from the weekend where he said gunmen fired at police officers.
The superintendent, who regularly holds press conferences calling for stiffer gun sentencing, said several of the shooters or those shot by police should "not have been on the street," citing criminal histories for many of them.
He also blamed the "proliferation of guns" saying too many criminals are armed.
"It all comes down to these guns," McCarthy said. "Our officers would not be forced to use their weapons if the offenders were not armed."
McCarthy defended his officers' actions generally, saying "almost without exception" police officers act properly in situations where they shoot someone.
When asked the frequency of police-involved shooting over the holiday weekend, McCarthy sought to give perspective by noting a slight decrease in police shootings this year compared with the same time period in 2013.
There have been 24 police-involved shootings so far this year, according to Larry Merritt, a spokesman for the Independent Police Review Authority which investigates police shootings. Through July 7, 2013, there were 26 police-involved shootings, Merritt said.
And McCarthy rejected claims made by some families that police-involved shootings over the weekend were not justified, calling them "absurd."
"Try taking a gun out of somebody's hand. Have you ever done it?" McCarthy asked reporters. "Does anybody realize what we're talking about here? These are guns. They kill people."
The holiday weekend saw more than 60 people wounded by gunfire, including 11 people who were killed. That number does not include the two teens killed and three others wounded in police-involved shooting.
When asked why so many people would allegedly point guns at police officers, McCarthy said part of the explanation is a gang culture that exists in the city. He said there are stiffer "sanctions" imposed by street gangs for losing a gun than penalties imposed by courts for getting caught with a firearm.
"They get severe beatings, sometimes it's a financial [issue] at the same time," McCarthy said. "Losing a gun is a big deal to these guys.
"I can tell you this, when I used to chase people in New York, they used to throw their guns away," McCarthy, who rose through the ranks of the New York Police Department before heading up police departments in Newark, New Jersey and Chicago. "When you chase people here in Chicago, they keep the guns, and they turn them on officers."
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