Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. La Shawn Ford

Interview

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INGRAHAM: Over 1,000 people were shot in Chicago this summer in yet another reminder of the tragedy that unfolds daily in the windy city. Now, with the city into chaos, what is the Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel doing? Today he announced that he is not running for reelection. Maybe they'll find a mayor who can get a grip on this violence. But it's a heavy lift.

Joining me now, Dan Proft, former candidate for Illinois governor, and La Shawn Ford, a Democratic state rep from Chicago. Congressman Ford, Rep Ford, are you surprised by this development today?

REP. LA SHAWN FORD, D, ILLINOIS STATE REPRESENTATIVE: I am surprised, and I just want to thank you for being concerned about the violence in Chicago. Thank you so much for covering it and giving it the attention THAT it needs.

INGRAHAM: I will, thank you. We had Mayor Emanuel, he was the star. He was considered -- some people talked to him as a possible presidential candidate down the road. But what was he not able to do? Violence has been a problem for some time but it's been especially bad during his tenure. But what was he not doing right among many things?

DAN PROFT, R, FORMER CANDIDATE FOR ILLINOIS GOVERNOR: He didn't do anything right. He was a disgrace, he was a disaster. In the seven-and-a- half years that he was a mayor, we are talking about upwards of 4,000 people murdered on the streets of Chicago, 20,000 shots so catastrophic injuries, just in the last seven-and-a-half years. You have a hired death per capita in the city of Chicago than Detroit before it filed bankruptcy. You have a Chicago public school system, one of the worst in the nation, that is embroiled in a sex scandal that rivals the Catholic Church. The tiny dancer, as I have popularized him in these parts because he is real small and he was a ballerina at Sarah Lawrence, and what kind of guy goes to Sarah Lawrence. But he was a guy who talked tough coming out of the Clinton years and the Obama years, and was a coward. All the tough decisions he said he was going to make when he came in in 2011, not a one of them he made. And that's the story of Chicago for the past 100 under Chicago Democrat rule.

INGRAHAM: Representative Ford, I want to go through some of the statistics on his leadership and then we're going to look to the future. And 32 percent job approval, 18 percent said they would reelect him, 69 percent said trust in government was a major problem, that's from Garry McCarthy who is running for mayor there. Do you think Garry McCarthy has a decent shot here at this race for mayor? I mean he thinks we should be much tougher on the hardened criminals. You've got to have a better clearance rate, actually locking people up who commit violent crimes. And he thinks this is a 911 situation in the west and Englewood neighborhood, southside. It's bad.

FORD: Laura, I think it's a bad plan for the city of Chicago. When you think about the way the current mayor handles the situation, it's with a heavy hand. And it's constantly talking about policing, and there has been no real plan, no real compassion for the city of Chicago.

So we have to make sure that we have strong police in the city of Chicago, police that can handle the crime. But we also have to make sure that we eliminate the crime and give people opportunities throughout the communities where the violence is happening. The violence costs people in Streeterville, downtown Chicago, millions of dollars because we have to hire more police.

So we have to have a point in Chicago where we are going to make sure that we say, after 30 years, Mayor Daley was the mayor for 22 years. He did a fine job of developing downtown and Rahm picked up on the develop, but that really hurt the city of Chicago. We have to make sure that we spread the developments so that Chicago can be the royal class city that we all know it could be. But you are never going to get rid of the violence.

INGRAHAM: Well, you can't have development without street safe streets. Dan, we're almost out of time, but I'll let you close it out.

PROFT: The first responsibility of government at every level is to provide for the physical security of its constituents. Chicago Democrats have failed to do so time and time again. And absolutely you can remove the violence. This idea, this policy of containment, like there is a bunch of George Kennans running around in charge of Chicago containing violence in these poor neighborhoods that have been turned into shooting galleries, most of the residents are law abiding. They are more worried about the layout than they are about protecting black families in the city of Chicago. It is a failure of the Chicago Democrat model of governance.

INGRAHAM: OK, gentlemen, thank you very much.

FORD: Thank you so much, Laura.

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