(Reuters) – Chicago’s mayor and police superintendent will hold a briefing Wednesday morning following a major shooting overnight and as U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican allies seek to spotlight violence in Democrat-run cities as a campaign issue.
Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago police Superintendent David Brown are scheduled to brief the media at 8:30 a.m. CDT (1330 GMT).
Numerous people were shot on Tuesday when occupants of a vehicle opened fire on funeral attendees on Chicago’s South Side and attendees fired back, police said.
Some 60 shell casings were found at the scene, in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter said at a news conference on Tuesday. Fourteen victims were being treated at five hospitals, he said.
The shooting came hours after Lightfoot said she would take Trump to court if he sent unidentified federal agents to police the city as has occurred in Portland, Oregon, pushing back on a threat that has sparked widespread controversy over the use of U.S. government force in American cities.
But Lightfoot had also said she would accept an influx of FBI agents and other identified law enforcement officials from the Trump administration, an acknowledgement of the scale of gun violence and other crimes plaguing the Midwestern city.
On Monday, Trump had said he would send federal law enforcement officials to several cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, to crack down on protests against racism and police brutality ignited by African American George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
Opinion polls show Trump trails Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the run-up to a Nov. 3 presidential election. Trump has sought to highlight a law-and-order message, in part to take the spotlight off his widely criticized response to the coronavirus pandemic, a weak point for him in the polls.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
