This is a Stretch

We're not sure the Slum Times is making the correct connections:

• The first shooting of the weekend occurred miles away from the prettiest parts of town, which is how it goes.
  
  A young man and teenage girl were walking down Michigan Avenue near 87th Street on the South Side Friday afternoon when somebody popped out of an alley and shot them. The man was in critical condition at a hospital. The girl’s injuries didn’t appear life-threatening.
  
  In trying to make sense of what happened to these two victims — as well as 54 other people shot, five of them fatally, last weekend — we’re very much interested, as anyone would be, in what the police might learn. Was this a gang thing? Was it about drugs? Where did the gun come from?
  
  At the same time, we find ourselves thinking about an entirely unrelated crime — a relatively small crime — that occurred a few days later, 11 miles further north, in one of the prettiest places in town, Millennium Park.

They are attempting to connect nearly 60 people shot with the vandalism of The Bean by members of the poverty stricken communities - and it's quite the stretch if you want to read it all:

• The vandalism also drew the official wrath of Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
  
  "I was pretty pissed off,” Lightfoot told reporters. "Look, there are some things that should be sacred. Millennium Park and The Bean have been an important, iconic part of who we are as Chicago from the time that park opened and The Bean was first opened up as an icon in our city. It is unbelievably unacceptable for people to be defacing something like that.”

So let's get this straight:

• Bean = Sacred
• Sixty shot in a single weekend...

Well, "Crime is Down!" you know. Everyone says so.