Prairie State Wire

The Illinois Republican Party makes no secret it thinks President Joe Biden was focused on all the wrong things during his recent visit to Illinois.

“Why is the POTUS coming to Illinois and not addressing this crisis,” the party posted on Facebook in calling attention to Chicago’s rising rate of violence.

Declaring “Illinois is in a state of emergency,” the Rev. Michael Pfleger of the Archdiocese of Chicago recently called on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to take immediate action.

“The Windy City is becoming known as a bloody city,” Pfleger told Fox News in demanding that the governor declare gun violence an emergency.

Pfleger is demanding that the governor "commit funds to reverse the trend here” along with convening an emergency summit of state, county, and city officials and community leaders and residents to come up with a comprehensive plan and strategy."

Over the July 11 weekend, the city of Chicago recorded its deadliest weekend of the year thus far, with more than 100 people being shot, 18 of them fatally.

"Governor Cuomo declared a gun violence state of emergency in New York State and is committing $139 million to reverse the trend of rising shootings and murders across the state. 886 people have been shot this year so far in New York, through July 4th," Pfleger said in his statement.

Included in the growing list of recent victim were a Chicago police officer and two ATF agents, all of whom were shot near a police station in the Morgan Park neighborhood. So far this year, 1,743 people have been shot and 357 killed in Chicago.

And the violence hasn't ended there. Through June 16, 692 people reported being the victims of carjackings across the city, an increase of 65 percent compared to 2020 and 497 percent over 2015, according to an analysis of incident reports by Chicago City Wire.

At its current pace, the city is on course to see 2,339 carjackings this year, or 6.4 per day. Last year, Chicago saw a 20-year record of 1,413 carjackings, or 3.9 per day. Chicago Police Department officials report carjacking incidents peaked in 2002 at 1,370 per year, but had trended down to a low of just 303 in 2014 before taking off again.