Chicago Mayor Lightfoot: Carjacking ‘crisis’ is linked to remote learning

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is suggesting that her city’s dramatic rise in carjackings since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is linked to students being kept away from classrooms with remote learning.

"We are seeing an inordinate number of juveniles that are the perpetrators of these carjackings. I think in Chicago we have consistently seen 50 percent or higher of the people that we are arresting are juveniles," Lightfoot told reporters. 

"We started seeing this rise in cases in 2020. And I’ll be frank and say in Chicago there was a correlation we believe between remote learning and the rise in carjackings," she added. "Having talked to state attorneys who are dealing with these cases in juvenile court and others, a lot of parents went to work during the day thinking their teenagers were logged on for remote learning, only to find something else. And I ask, ‘is there some new market for stolen cars?’ And unfortunately the answer was no -- that for many of these kids, some of whom had no prior involvement in the criminal justice system, this was pure boredom."