Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has lost his title as Public Enemy Number One, which was bestowed upon him by the Chicago Crime Commission in 2013.
Actually, Guzman was the only person on the list for the past 87 years.
The Commission first coined and designated the title to Al Capone in 1930. Up until El Chapo came onto the scene, the Commission had yet to regard a criminal worthy of the same moniker.
“Not since the Chicago Crime Commission’s first Public Enemy Number One has any criminal deserved this title more than Guzman,” said J.R. Davis, chairman and president of the Chicago Crime Commission. “Compared to Guzman, Al Capone looks like an amateur.”
Really? Hard to believe in a town that knows a bit about organized crime and has a significant list of infamous criminals in it’s recent past.
Let’s look at a few—the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, domestic terrorist and target of one of the FBI’s costliest investigations; John Dillinger, depression-era gangster and bank robber who was notorious for getting away with his crimes and not harming those he robbed; and the horrible John Wayne Gacy, Chicago’s worst serial killer and convicted rapist of 33 teenage boys.
Then, there’s Chicago’s very own former governor Rod Blagojevich, fourth of the last seven Illinois governors to serve time behind bars.
Nevertheless, the Chicago Crime Commission had vowed it would keep El Chapo on their Public Enemy Number One list until he was safely in U.S. custody, which he is now.
“At the time of his escape in 2015, the Chicago Crime Commission was outraged that Chapo Guzman had been allowed to slip through the hands of Mexican authorities once again,” said Davis.
Chicago has been identified as a key recipient of El Chapo’s drug operation and as a trans-shipment hub for the cartel. The Sinaloa Cartel found willing business partners among the 100,000 street gang members in Chicago.
Drug enforcement experts conservatively estimated that annual revenues from El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel had exceeded $3 billion—more than those of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group.
Fortune Magazine rated the Sinaloa Cartel as the fifth largest organized crime group in the world. Now with the cartel’s leader in U.S. custody, one wonders if that dubious title will also be lost.
Speaking of organized crime and violence, President Trump has been busy on his personal Twitter account with a blast of threatening tweets warning that he’ll “send in the feds” unless Chicago fixes the “carnage” of its violent crime problem.
The hail of Trump tweets came after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel commented that Trump should get over his fixation with the size of the audience at his inauguration.
Related: ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s Case Will Rely Heavily on Snitches from Chicago
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