Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot suggested that the city’s disturbing spike in carjackings is linked to remote learning. Mayor Lightfoot said that there is a correlation between students not being preoccupied in the classroom to the rise in carjackings.

Fox News reports:

“We are seeing an inordinate number of juveniles that are the perpetrators of these carjackings. I think in Chicago we have consistently seen 50 percent or higher of the people that we are arresting are juveniles,” Lightfoot told reporters.

“We started seeing this rise in cases in 2020. And I’ll be frank and say in Chicago there was a correlation we believe between remote learning and the rise in carjackings,” she added. “Having talked to state attorneys who are dealing with these cases in juvenile court and others, a lot of parents went to work during the day thinking their teenagers were logged on for remote learning, only to find something else. And I ask, ‘is there some new market for stolen cars?’ And unfortunately the answer was no — that for many of these kids, some of whom had no prior involvement in the criminal justice system, this was pure boredom.”

Data compiled by CBS Chicago shows that there were 603 carjackings in 2019, before that number rose to 1,413 in 2020 and 1,850 last year.

The Chicago Teacher’s Union  pushed back on Mayor Lightfoots remarks saying her words were a “hurtful smear on students.”

“Every child in our public schools in Chicago deserves an apology from the mayor today, who claimed with zero evidence that there was a correlation between remote learning in 2020 and an increase in car-jackings, which have been growing across the nation,” the union said in a statement.

Mayor Lightfoot and the Chicago Teacher’s Union have repeatedly clashed over the issue of students returning to the classroom.