Cartel kingpin Chicago’s new Public Enemy No. 1

Cartel kingpin Chicago’s new Public Enemy No. 1

CHICAGO (AP) — Authorities in Chicago are naming a drug kingpin in Mexico as the city’s Public Enemy No. 1 — a label first given to gangster Al Capone and one that hasn’t been used since Prohibition.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is being singled out for his role as leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which supplies the bulk of narcotics sold in the city, according to the Chicago Crime Commission and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Not since the Chicago Crime Commission’s first Public Enemy No. 1 has any criminal deserved this title more than Joaquin Guzman,” J.R. Davis, president of 94-year-old Chicago Crime Commission, said in remarks prepared for an announcement later Thursday.

It was the Chicago Crime Commission that designated Capone Public Enemy No. 1 in 1930. The non-government body that tracks city crime trends called other people public enemies, but Capone was the only one to ever be its No. 1.

Until now.

Unlike Capone, Guzman doesn’t live in Chicago. He lives hundreds of miles away in a mountain hideaway in western Mexico. But for all the havoc he creates in the nation’s third-largest city, he ought to be treated as a local Chicago crime boss, the DEA’s top Chicago official, Jack Riley, told The Associated Press in a recent interview. His office is joining the Chicago Crime Commission in handing out the moniker to Guzman.