How well are Chicago’s restrictive gun laws working out? Pretty good, at least from the perspective of armed criminals, who have an almost endless supply of unarmed victims to choose from. The website CWBChicago reports that at least 30 people were targeted by armed robbers in a twelve hour span Sunday night into Monday morning, including a news crew who had set up a live shot at the scene of an earlier robbery.
The newspeople were in the 1200 block of North Milwaukee early Monday when three or four masked men robbed them, according to preliminary information from the scene. An officer said the robbers were Black males wearing ski masks—one with a rifle, the others with handguns.
Without identifying the victims as a news crew, a Chicago police spokesperson confirmed that a 28-year-old man and a 42-year-old man were outside in the 1200 block of North Milwaukee when a black SUV and a gray sedan pulled up around 4:53 a.m.
Three men got out of the vehicles wearing ski masks and displaying guns. They took the victims’ belongings and fled southbound, police said. An initial police dispatch said the robbers took the journalists’ TV camera, but that has not been confirmed. They are the second Chicago TV news unit to be robbed this month.
Earlier, a woman was carjacked on the same block. Police said three men got out of a blue sedan around 10:12 p.m. One pointed a gun at her and took control of her white Ford Escape.
According to Chicago police, a gray sedan was also used by a robbery crew on Saturday and Sunday, with dozens of victims reporting similar encounters with the armed men. While homicides in Chicago are down by roughly 7% this year compared to 2022, the number of robberies reported across the city is soaring.