Obama dispatches officials to Chicago to address youth violence

As President Barack Obama prepares to fly to Denmark to sell his adopted city
of Chicago to the world, he is dispatching two of his top
administration officials to the Windy City to address youth violence.

The decision to send Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago next week comes after a video showing the beating death of an honors student, 16-year-old Derrion Albert, has made the rounds on the Internet.

{mosads}Obama, who was flying to Copenhagen on Thursday night to address the International Olympic Committee and push for Chicago to host the 2016 Games, met with advisers and discussed the beating death in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

“Obviously, it’s of great concern to the president, as somebody who’s lived in Chicago, but would and should be a concern for every American,” Gibbs said. “This isn’t a Chicago problem. Violence, youth violence, is a problem throughout our country.”

Gibbs said the president was “concerned,” and he asked Holder and Duncan, who is the former head of the Chicago public school system, to travel to Chicago to meet with school officials, students and the community at large “to talk about the issues of school violence and youth violence.”

Gibbs declined to say if there would be any specific announcements next week.

“I think there’s obviously things that all levels of government can do, all levels of — and partly what we can do, obviously, through something like a COPS program is provide more police officers on the streets, understanding, though, that you are not going to be able to legislate an end to the type of shocking and horrific behavior that we saw that happened in Chicago in the beating-to-death of that honors student,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs said he was unaware if the president had seen the video.

Gibbs, who on Wednesday called the video “chilling,” said the president has “full confidence in the safety of the city and will be prepared to talk about that if that were a question” in Copenhagen.