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Chicago Cops To Guard Military Recruitment Sites After Deadly Chattanooga Shooting

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has ordered officers to provide security at all military recruiting sites in the city, after a gunman killed four Marines at a recruitment center in Tennessee on Thursday.

Authorities have said Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, opened fire at two military recruiting facilities a few miles apart in Chattanooga, killing four marines in the second attack. Three other people were wounded. Abdulazeez also was killed.

Armed Forces recruiting centers like the two Abdulazeez attacked are fixtures across the country. They're highly visible, often open, and almost always welcoming to people off the street, but they're also typically unsecured.

That's why, in the wake of the Chattanooga shooting spree, Chicago's top cop has ordered police officers be stationed outside every military recruiting center in the city, until further notice.

"The measures are being taken out of an abundance of caution. CPD has been in regular contact with our federal partners and there is no active terror threat or intelligence affecting the city of Chicago and no direct link to the incident occurring in Tennessee," McCarthy said in a statement early Friday.

The order comes as security at Armed Forces recruitment sites across the nation is being reevaluated.

"Here are these military people, standing, and recruiting, and getting like kind to defend our country, and they're not defended themselves," former FBI assistant director Bill Gavin said. "To continue to have them expose themselves to that kind of danger from a maniacal evil person is hard for most of us to swallow."

Gavin said recruiting centers, which are often located in shopping malls, are especially vulnerable to attack.

"Shopping centers, strip malls; they're all over this country. They don't have any security whatsoever," he said. "I don't know what the real answer is, yet, but I know there has to be some change made in order to protect these young people that are doing the best for their country."

Authorities have said, so far, it appears the suspect in the Chattanooga shootings acted alone, and investigators have not yet found any evidence linking him to international terror groups.

A federal official has told CBS News Abdulazeez was not on law enforcement radar concerning possible terror links or aspirations, and the FBI was not aware of him as being any kind of threat. Investigators are trying to determine if he was influenced or motivated by ISISS, which has urged "lone wolf" style attacks on the military and police in the U.S.

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