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SEARCH“You know, there were rumors floating around about — and I didn’t verify this — but rumors floating around that they were telling their officers, ‘Don’t do anything. Over Memorial Day weekend, don’t intercede,’” Lightfoot said on CAN-TV’s “Chicago Newsroom” program.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot discussed during a cable TV interview the Memorial Day weekend violence when 41 people were shot and 7 killed and spread a rumor that police inaction was responsible for some of the carnage.
In her remarks, Lightfoot sought to draw a connection between the bloody weekend and difficulties she is expected to encounter negotiating a new police contract with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
“You know, there were rumors floating around about — and I didn’t verify this — but rumors floating around that they were telling their officers, ‘Don’t do anything. Over Memorial Day weekend, don’t intercede,’” Lightfoot said on CAN-TV’s “Chicago Newsroom” program. “‘If you see some criminal activity, just lay back, do nothing.’ I hope to God that wasn’t true because, man oh man, if that happened there’s going to be a reckoning.”
Moments after she leveled it, the show’s host, Ken Davis, asked the mayor whether she bought in to the rumor.
“Do you have any reason to believe that that happened?” Davis asked.
Without answering directly, Lightfoot contended past leadership of the police union had previously pushed for something similar.
The Sun-Times fact checked the Mayor's statement and ruled that it was false.
