Chicago Democrat leader rips 'socialists,' 'ultra progressives' who turn blind eye to violent crime in city: 'Innocent people are being hunted down like prey'

Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez — a Democrat — blasted "socialists" and "ultra progressives" who turn a blind eye to violent criminals in the city, passing laws that let them go free while "innocent people are being hunted down like prey."

What are the details?

Fox News interviewed Lopez in the wake of the release of a surveillance video late last month showing a two attackers running up on a man from behind in a Chicago alley, punching and stomping the screaming victim, and then stealing from him before walking away.

However, Lopez tweeted that "nothing" in the surveillance video "is a detainable offense & no bail [will be] required" if the culprits are caught.

Lopez added to Fox News in Tuesday's interview that "things like robbery, burglary, arson, assault, even threatening elected officials like myself, do not warrant you being held on bond anymore in the state of Illinois, and criminals are taking note. They have become emboldened, and the deafening cry is not heard by the politicians demanding change."

Indeed, the first day cash bail was officially eliminated across Illinois last month, a woman who was charged with aggravated battery against four Chicago police officers was released the next day.

Lopez also told Fox News that voters are beginning to understand that when they elect "socialists or ultra progressives" to office, the result is "a tone-deaf leadership that doesn't care."

"Common sense requires us to start standing up and pushing back on the criminality in our neighborhoods, to start holding people and parents accountable, because oftentimes these are 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds who are engaging in this behavior, such as the armed carjacking that is so rampant in the city of Chicago," Lopez told the cable network.

He added to Fox News that the frequent victims of such crime in "black and brown" neighborhoods "have had enough" — and that "no one talks about them."

However, Lopez told the cable network, "They are often talked about for the progressive agenda, for the extreme liberal agenda that says [progressives] care. But their policies, particularly when it comes to police reform and criminal justice reform, in my opinion, are very racist because oftentimes the victims of the most heinous crimes by the repeat offenders are those same black and brown residents that the white liberals claim to care about but truly don't."

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