#Chicago official calls for National Guard after FBI warning on cop bounty

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Chicago police officers at the scene of a shooting.
Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune via AP

A Chicago elected official is calling on the city to summon the National Guard, saying “we need help” in the wake of a reported FBI warning that street gangs are targeting cops, according to reports.

City Alderman Anthony Napolitano, a former cop, said Wednesday that the anti-police sentiment in the Windy City “has created a brazen attitude with criminals,” and that Chicago needs a stronger police presence to fight back, Fox News reported.

“We knew that criminals were going to be so emboldened to put bounties on police officers,” Napolitano said on the Fox show Outnumbered Overtime. “We saw this coming and we warned people of it and it fell on deaf ears and now we’re dealing with this ridiculous ideology to defund the police, asking to take money away from the police.”

“We need more police officers on the street,” he said, adding that the city is “losing businesses because there’s no security here right now.”

The plea comes after the FBI notified the city of a “Potential Activity Alert” that as many as three dozen gangs had made a pact to “shoot on sight any cop that has a weapon drawn on any subject in public.”

“Members of these gang factions have been actively searching for, and filming, police officers in the performance of their duties,” the alert said. “The purpose of which is to catch on film an officer drawing his/her weapon on any subject and the subsequent ‘shoot on sight’ of said officer.”

The alert was made public Monday after two Chicago cops were shot during a traffic stop — although there is no indication if that incident was a result of the gang pact, ABC7 Chicago reported.

Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said Monday that dozens of city officers had been shot so far this year.

“I think 51 officers being shot at or shot in one year, I think that quadruples any previous year in Chicago’s history, so I think there’s more than the suggestion that people are seeking to do harm to cops,” Brown told Fox.

Nonetheless, some among the city’s 50 local lawmakers have come out in favor of shifting money away from police and into affordable housing, mental health services and other social services — something Napolitano said would be a mistake.

He added that “you have aldermen getting ready to go into our budget in October and to pull funds away from the police officers and they’re selling false hope to communities like they are going to create businesses with this.”