March 31, 2022

Lightfoot’s Defense Spending: It’s All Trump’s Fault

It appears that America’s worst mayor is also America’s most fearful mayor.

All that’s missing are the bright red jackets and those humungous bearskin hats. Other than that, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has her Royal Guard.

True enough, “Unit 544” doesn’t look or sound nearly as glamorous as the various details that protect the queen of England and her residences, but the point is the same. As the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Nearly two years ago, the Chicago Police Department quietly created a special unit to protect Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home and City Hall and oversee her personal bodyguard detail. Unit 544 began with a handful of officers and has grown, as of March 21, to a roster of 65 officers, five sergeants and a lieutenant, city records show. Like previous Chicago mayors, Lightfoot also has a separate personal bodyguard detail, which includes about 20 officers, the records show.

Welp, we’re glad Her Honor feels safe now. It’d be a shame if she had to live in perpetual fear like those lowly South Siders she lords over.

Of course, just because she’s paranoid doesn’t mean folks aren’t out to get her. She is, after all, America’s Worst Mayor, having assumed that crown as soon as New York City’s Bill de Blasio exited stage left. And there are no doubt more than a few Chicagoans who, if given the chance, would love to pelt her with rotten fruit. Or worse.

To be fair, Lightfoot had a serious scare recently. According to Chicago Police, a disturbed man named Joseph Igartua, who was apparently angry over some parking tickets, approached Lightfoot’s home to personally deliver a letter to her. He was armed with a loaded gun. Apparently, the cops stopped and released him because they thought he had a valid state concealed-carry license. Nothing came of the incident, nor of two subsequent incidents in which he returned to her home, but he was arrested on February 16 about a mile from the mayor’s home after firing his weapon five times. He’s been charged with stalking and reckless discharge of a weapon, and, as the Sun-Times reports, “A background check revealed his concealed carry license had been suspended and his firearm owner’s identification card was revoked. He’s being held without bond.”

“I thank God for the police protection that we have,” said the mayor, “but this one is really unnerving. And scary. He first came to our house on a Saturday night when we were there. My wife and child and I were home. When somebody shows up at your house, clearly going through a mental crisis, with a loaded gun, that’s frightening.”

True enough. But get a load of whom Lightfoot seems to blame for this incident. “When the president of the United States uses the world’s largest megaphone and platform to target you personally, terrible things happen,” she said, referring to Donald Trump. “And he not only blew a dog whistle, he pointed really evil and dangerous people right at my doorstep.”

But neither Donald Trump nor Joseph Igartua were the reason for the creation of Unit 544. That’s due to Lightfoot’s fears, both real and imagined. But it makes us wonder whether Lightfoot now regrets having proposed cutting a whopping $80 million from the Chicago Police Department budget in 2020.

It also makes us wonder about what Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said when asked about Lightfoot’s lavish security detail: “While murders are soaring, while districts are barebones for manpower, all that matters is protecting her castle.”

Democrats, it seems, hate cops right up until they need them.

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