Murder victim’s brother slams Chicago district attorney for ‘active war zone’

Gianno Caldwell, whose 18-year-old brother was fatally shot in Chicago last year, called on federal lawmakers Tuesday to help address the city’s glaring violent crime rates, which have remained elevated in recent years.

Caldwell, a Fox News analyst and consulting firm owner, made his appeal to congressional Republicans during a field event they hosted as part of a series of stops to bring attention to crime in urban locations.

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“The police have repeatedly said that my brother was not the target, that he just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Caldwell told the lawmakers. “But in Chicago, being at the wrong place at the wrong time could be sleeping in your bed and a bullet comes through your window or in the backseat of a car at a McDonald’s drive-thru, as 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams was murdered.”

Christian Caldwell was shot and killed by an unidentified male on the south side of Chicago on the morning of June 24, 2022, according to local media. The suspect shot and injured two others before fleeing the scene in a black sedan.

Gianno Caldwell said that an arrest had recently been made in the case but that the murder “has not yet been solved.”

He said he believed his position with national media resulted in Chicago police taking him more seriously but that eventually, he became unsatisfied with their response.

“I had access to a platform most families do not. Even then, it didn’t last long,” Caldwell said. “Soon, police weren’t returning my calls.”

The Chicago Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.

“On the same day my brother was killed, a 5-month-old girl by the name of Cecelia was murdered in a drive-by shooting while sitting in the backseat of a car with her family,” Caldwell said. “Chicago is an active war zone. This is not hyperbole.”

Caldwell placed partial blame for the city’s grim crime statistics on Chicago’s top prosecutor, Kim Foxx, a Democrat, and the current and previous mayors and Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D-IL).

He said of Foxx specifically that she “refuses to prosecute, decriminalization of offenses, laws like the SAFE-T Act, which ends cash bail and allow criminals back on the street to commit more crime, and the ‘no chase’ policy, which constrains the police from doing their jobs.”

The SAFE-T Act, a statewide initiative, went into effect last week, making Illinois the first state to fully eliminate cash bail. Foxx celebrated the moment and condemned the bill’s critics, asking, “What is so disarming about making sure people are not detained because they are poor?”

Foxx also tore into House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), who led the event, for appearing in Chicago with Caldwell and others while the government was just days away from a shutdown.

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“This behavior is not surprising, but it is alarming,” she said in a statement to local media, claiming Jordan was “seeking to exploit the deaths of black and brown victims of crime rather than supporting common sense gun legislation is in line with his continued hypocrisy and alignment with his party that’s beholden to a man currently facing 96 felony charges across four jurisdictions.”

Jordan, for his part, criticized Foxx as a “rogue prosecutor” whose “decision not to prosecute crimes is made even worse when the legislature passes its pro-criminal policies like they did just recently with the so-called SAFE-T Act.”