News Crew's Report on Armed Robberies Goes Wrong After 3 Men Wearing Ski Masks Approach Them
Well, that’s certainly one way to dramatize a serious news issue.
According to Block Club Chicago, a local Spanish-language outlet in the Windy City were victims of an armed robbery in the early hours of Monday morning after a group of men wearing ski masks pulled up to the setup for a live shot and took the broadcast journalists’ gear before getting away.
And what were the reporters covering? A crime surge in the surrounding neighborhood, including armed robberies.
Block Club Chicago reported the attack happened at roughly 4:30 a.m., as the Univision Chicago crew were setting up for a live shot.
Then, “a black SUV and a grey sedan pulled up to them,” a police representative and the reporter said.
“Three men ‘wearing ski masks and displaying firearms’ got out of the vehicles and took numerous belongings from the news crew before fleeing, police said.”
The reporter, who requested anonymity, called the incident “total irony.”
According to the reporter, he and a photographer had been preparing for live shots in the Wicker Park neighborhood, which has emerged as an unusually bleak spot in a city where crime is already pretty darn bleak.
Earlier this year, for instance, WLS-TV reported that just one group conducted nine robberies in five neighborhoods, including Wicker Park, within the space of an hour.
WGN-TV noted in a Jan. 4 report that “[a]t least a half-dozen armed robberies and two New Years Eve shootings near the Wicker Park neighborhood are leaving residents concerned over the safety of the area.”
Armed robbery spree hits Bucktown, Wicker Park, West Town this morning – CWB Chicago https://t.co/uAEkhJk3ZI
— Secure Options (@secureoptions) February 26, 2023
Armed robbery and carjacking wave rolls through Bucktown and Wicker Park: https://t.co/YnkzydMsdW
— Leroy Green (@leroygreen) October 3, 2022
“So far in 2023, Chicago’s 1st Ward, which includes parts of Wicker Park, West Town and Logan Square — and the street where the news crew was robbed — has seen at least 164 robberies. That’s up from 126 in 2022 and 94 in 2021, year-to-date,” Block Club Chicago reported.
However, this is usually something that gets reported on, not something that affects reporters directly.
Welcome to Chicago, I guess.
“As a journalist, you never want to be the story, right? You’re reporting on the story but you never think that you can become the story. That’s not why we do this,” the reporter told Block Club Chicago.
“So I guess it’s another reminder of how important it is to keep doing these stories and to keep pressure on our local authorities to try to prevent more events like that.”
“This could happen to anybody. So it’s an eye opener, for anyone that works in news that this could happen,” he added.
“It happened to me early in the morning, but I think it could literally happen any time of day.”
At the very least, neither the journalist nor the photographer were injured, and the journalist said the only valuable item the crooks got away with was their video camera.
To make things worse, this isn’t even the first armed robbery to hit a TV journalist in Chicago this month, with Windy City crime-patrol news outlet CWB Chicago noting that the WLS-TV reporter was mugged on the city’s West Side while preparing to cover a news conference on Aug. 8.
Despite having some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, Chicago continues to be plagued by higher-than-average rates of violent crimes, including those committed by guns. Local officials may try to shift the blame to looser gun laws elsewhere — but, as gun-centric outlet Bearing Arms noted, that’s hardly the problem.
“One big reason for the increase in these types of crimes is that the perpetrators have little fear or concern about being caught,” the outlet reported after the Univision robbery.
“According to the most recent annual report by the Chicago Police Department, in 2021 police made arrests in just 28 percent of reported robberies, and last year that already anemic number plunged even lower to 20 percent. Out of 8,973 reported incidents, arrests were made in only 1,807. That 20 percent clearance rate is higher than the 13 percent clearance rate for burglaries and an almost unbelievable 4 percent clearance rate for motor vehicle theft, but it still means that the vast majority of the time armed robbers are getting away with their crime and their victim’s belongings.”
As for the Univision case? Did the perps get dragged into court? Are there any promising leads or info the police are sharing? Uh, not quite. According to a Monday WLS report, “The incident remains under investigation.”
What a shocker.
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