Some are hopeful that Lori Lightfoot can succeed where her immediate predecessors did not – but others are concerned she has reverted to failed ‘get tough’ policies

Heading into a long Fourth of July weekend last month, Lori Lightfoot, the new Chicago mayor, outlined a broad plan to cut gun violence in her city.

Lightfoot, who succeeded Rahm Emanuel in May, said she and the police chief, Eddie Johnson, would put 1,500 more officers on the street and work on confiscating weapons as a short-term effort to curb the shootings – which spike during the summertime and plague the city.

“People cannot and should not live in neighborhoods that resemble a war zone,” Lightfoot told CBS News before the long weekend.

But it was another bloody holiday in Chicago: 63 people were shot over the course of the holiday weekend, including a 14-year-old girl, and six were killed.

The intense violence is continuing as Chicago’s summer wears on. On Monday, six people were shot. The seemingly endless incidents underscore the mammoth undertaking Lightfoot faces in seeking to stop the bleeding in America’s third-largest city.

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Some people in Chicago say they are hopeful Lightfoot can succeed where her immediate predecessors – Emanuel and Richard M Daley – did not. But others say that despite promises during her campaign, inauguration, and as mayor to address the systemic problems driving the violence, they are concerned Lightfoot seems simply to have mirrored previous administrations’ proposals.

The Rev Ira Acree, a pastor in Chicago’s west side Austin neighborhood, is among those who support Lightfoot and believes she has made addressing the complex institutional problems behind the bloodshed a priority.

“You have to give them a grade A for effort,” Acree told the Guardian. “But probably you can say an ‘incomplete’ overall.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot walks during the 50th annual Pride Parade in Chicago on 30 June. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczyński/Reuters

However, Louisa Manske, the policy and communications coordinator at the Workers Center for Racial Justice, sees Lightfoot veering away from the promises she made during her campaign.

Manske said: “What we heard was sort of this same ‘law and order’ narrative that has found a comfortable home in the public discourse around community safety that’s both false and incredibly destructive.”

Where Emanuel’s efforts to combat gun violence may be remembered as centered around the hiring of more police officers, Lightfoot vowed to treat the shootings as a “public health crisis” that would require addressing issues of economic disinvestment, lack of access to resources, and distrust between communities of color and the police department to solve.

She appointed a deputy for a new office of public safety, as promised. She has continued to talk up neighborhood investments on the predominantly black and brown south and west sides, which have been neglected by previous administrations and where most of the city’s deadly violence occurs. She has personally appeared in the communities, including earlier this summer, when she attended an annual peace march at Father Michael Pfleger’s St Sabina church on the south side.

“She’s actually been on the ground,” said Lance Williams, a sociologist at Chicago’s Northeastern Illinois University. “She’s been out in the community, talking to real people … That’s really good.”

But some, including the Workers Center for Racial Justice, have raised concerns that she has reverted to failed “get tough” on crime policies. Such policies “drive up mass incarceration, fracture communities, and point the public attention away from the actual issue”, Manske told the Guardian.

Whether she can succeed in reducing the violence here remains to be seen.

Manske said groups like hers would work to “guide” her toward neighborhood investment, greater police accountability, and reforms of the state’s criminal justice system. But even Lightfoot’s supporters say a holistic, multifaceted approach to tackling both the immediate and deeper problems is likely to take time.

“We know it’s gonna be a heavy lift,” Williams said. “It takes massive coordination. It takes massive resources. It’s not something that’s gonna happen in the next five years. This is long-term strategic planning … This is a cultural change. It’s gonna take a dynamic person to be able to pull this thing off. The mayor seems to be up to the task.”

But even if systemic reform doesn’t happen overnight, communities here are hoping for some victories along the way, as the death toll continues to grow.

“It’s gonna take a long time because we’ve had the collaborative failure of multiple institutions,” Acree said, citing schools, the government, the judicial system and long-term economic disinvestment from poorer neighborhoods.

“It’s gonna take some time to turn things around, but we want to see some small victories. We do want these numbers to go down.

“We don’t expect them to disappear,” Acree added, “but we do expect them to dissipate.”