Although the shooting that took place at a funeral outside of a church was considered gang related, the gang wars have escalated in young and the youth in the city have become youthful assassins. For example in early April as a court battle over "warrant-less" searches continues in Chicago Federal District Court, the real battle raged in the high-rise Public Housing Projects on South State and Federal Streets. Chicago is well known for its reputation as the home of "gangsters", but, the "gangsters" of the 90's are not members of the Italian mafia nor bootleggers of Canadian whiskey. Today’s Chicago "gangsters" are the purveyors of drugs, prostitution, guns, and "murder for hire". Chicago broke an all-time record for murders during the month of March, and police think that many of these killings can be attributed to gang warfare. According to police sources, the total number of murders in Chicago last month was eighty-eight (88). This contributes to an overall total number of homicides for the year, which stands at two-hundred and twenty-one (221). Police say that if the murders continue at the present rate that Chicago could easily set a new annual record for the number of Chicagoans killed in a single year.
Police intelligence sources say that the latest increase in homicides is the result of gang "turf wars", as gang members and drug dealers fight over control of given neighborhoods. Residents of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) Robert Taylor Homes say that the drug dealers are actually fighting over control of the very buildings that they live in. During a recent weekend, more than three-hundred (300) separate shooting incidents were reported, in the vicinity of the Robert Taylor Homes. Fourteen (14) people were killed during the same weekend, with twelve (12) of the fourteen (14) incidents believed to be gang related. While police admit that the increase in shootings occurs almost every Spring, they also say that the number of incidents this year is expanding, with a proportionate increase in murder rates. Gang members, using high-powered semi-automatic and automatic weapons, often "spray" a given street corner or playground in hopes of wounding or killing rival gang members. In certain neighborhoods on Chicago's South and West sides, gang motivated "Drive-By" shootings are a common occurrence. Unfortunately, all too often, bystanders and otherwise blameless kids are caught in the hail of gunfire.
More amazing than the number of people wounded or killed, is the age of the "shooters". A Chicago Police Department (CPD)spokesperson said that today's "gang assassins" are frequently identified as 15, 16, or 17 year old black youths. CPD spokesperson Billy Davis, is quoted by the United Press International (UPI) as saying "you've got kids out there convinced that they'll never grow up...that they'll die tomorrow...if their lives are worth nothing, neither is yours". A purposefully anonymous police insider said that one of the reasons younger and younger gang members are doing the shooting, is because they will receive shorter sentences, or no jail time at all for the commission of the same crime as an adult. Juvenile gang members are often called upon by gang leaders to conceal drugs and guns, because they know that juveniles will receive more lenient treatment in court, if they are caught. Secondarily, several recent psychological studies have found that young minority offenders, often coming from single family homes, and with low self-esteem, seem to show little or no remorse for their violent actions. Several sociologists suggest that young people growing up in a violent atmosphere, subjected to crime and poverty, and with poor role models, may contribute to the "desensitization" that allows the unremorseful conduct that results in many murders.
Also most important, in the view of some psychologists, is the fact that the typical urban drug dealer or gang leader may appear to be the most prosperous member of society in a given neighborhood. A number of stories abound, in regard to the drug dealer or gang leader that gives money to mothers to buy groceries, who sponsors local sports teams, and always gives away Christmas presents during the holiday season. These same people always seem to have the newest clothes, most expensive cars, and to have the prettiest women attached to their arms. To an impressionable youth, the drug dealer or gang leader is a successful role model and someone they want to emulate. Unfortunately, this same gang "leader" also teaches the use of explosives and automatic weapons, how to smoke, shoot, or ingest drugs, the proper method of "cutting" and selling drugs to children, and how to force a previously addicted woman into prostitution. Thus, career criminals teach juveniles how to commit crimes, and pay them for their ruthlessness and avarice. Those that enter into the gang system rarely ever leave, unless it is in an expensive casket, probably paid for by the gang.
Police say that they have stepped up patrols in the gang and drug ridden neighborhoods. And yet the killings go on. But, long-time observers warned that this was only Spring, and that the violence usually escalates as warmer weather comes to the "Windy City". Unless some viable solutions are found soon, law enforcement "old-timers" predict a long, hot, and dangerous Summer in Chicago which in fact is the case and many fear that the violence in Chicago will escalate even greater than it was in 2008 were violence soared. Blaming a "reeling" economy and an influx of guns on the street, Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis released final crime statistics for 2008 that showed both violent and property crime rose from 2007. The city ended the year with 510 homicides, up 14.6 percent over 2007 and the most in five years. There were 163,316 incidents of crime in total, an increase of 2.5 percent. Weis pointed to continued gang crime as a major source of the violence, saying that 92 percent of murder suspects and 72 percent of murder victims had criminal records. Police seized more cash and shut down more drug corners in 2008 than in the previous year but took in about 600 fewer guns with 13,065.
Brought in to improve the department's reputation after a number of high-profile scandals, Weis came under fire for the rise in crime and spent much of 2008 trying to reverse the trend. Weis acknowledged the success of his predecessor, Philip Cline, who led the department to its lowest murder tallies in 40 years but battled officer misconduct. To fight the crime increases, Weis said, he has resurrected some of Cline's most successful programs such as the Special Operations Section, which targeted gangs and guns but was disbanded amid officer abuse scandals. Weis created a similar unit, the Mobile Strike Force, but said he instituted better oversight and tighter controls. General complaints against officers remained flat in 2008, with 7,163 investigated by police, said Deputy Supt. Peter Brust, head of the Weis-created Bureau of Professional Standards. Still those steps have not reduced the violence in the city as of today but the police department is still trying to do all it can in a city that seems to have become lawless as well as has lost its moral conscience.
To make the violence in the streets of Chicago even worse is the fact that the social costs of gun violence in Chicago total about $2.5 billion each year, according to a report released by an academic group formed to research effective ways to reduce violent crime. "Gun Violence among School-Age Youth in Chicago," the first report from the University of Chicago Crime Lab, used interviews, focus groups, police data and social research to characterize factors underlying Chicago's escalating murder rate. Expanding upon previous research that every crime-related gunshot wound causes around $1 million in social costs, the report's four authors calculated the annual cost of gun violence at $2.5 billion, or $2,500 per Chicago household. The cost reflects in part the repellent effect of violence upon city populations, pushing more people into outlying communities, said Crime Lab director Jens Ludwig, a professor of social service administration, law, and public policy at the university."Every city is trying very hard to encourage families to live in the city to support the tax base so that we can improve city services for everyone in the community," Ludwig said. "But gun violence winds up making that much more difficult."
Other findings from the report include:
--Most of residents at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center suffer from at least one psychiatric disorder.
--The average juvenile in custody scored lower on a vocabulary test than 95 percent of the general youth population.
--More than a third of homicide victims had alcohol in their system, while only 3 percent showed traces of "hard drugs" like heroin or cocaine in their blood.
--Four-fifths of Chicago homicide victims in 2008 died from gunshot wounds.
While some of these risk factors for youth gun violence were previously shown by other studies, characterizing the magnitude of these factors could suggest different strategies for violence reduction, Ludwig said. "There are a bunch of things around the mental health piece and the schooling piece that I think people might not have realized and provide real targets of opportunity, above and beyond the sort of things that we've already been doing," he said. The report recommends that intervention programs should seek to help children before the age of 13, the age at which Chicago and nationwide arrest rates begin to rapidly rise. It also endorses programs that offer immediate rewards for good behavior -- such as the cash-for-grades program implemented last year by Chicago Public Schools -- and swift but less severe punishment for crimes.
However no specific programs are outlined in the report, though the group is openly accepting proposals to reduce crime and violence. The group will then help secure funding for approved programs and evaluate their outcomes with the rigor of a medical trial. "What we want to try to do is take advantage of the fact that there are lots of people out there who really understand the problem in a deep and full way and already have developed promising ideas about what to do given their experience," Ludwig said. So why should such a study be taken seriously when it doesn’t offer any specific program for the city to implement in order to deal with violence in the city. However the young people in Chicago are dying violent deaths at an alarming rate as the city tries to figure out to deal the escalating violence.
As mentioned previously at least 36 Chicago Public School students have been killed, most of them victims of gunshots. Scores of other Chicago children and teenagers have been wounded in shootings, and there were concerns that the gun violence could escalate when school let out for the summer and those concerns were true because the violence hasn’t stopped cause the school year ended. While urban gun violence in Chicago and other cities is nothing new, there is a growing sense among community leaders that it's now at a crisis level especially in the wake of the shooting at a church during a funeral. So as the summer is coming to an end and the gun violence in the city seems to have not end, many students are fearful to even go back to school. Clinet Jordan, a graduated senior from Chicago's Simeon Career Academy high school, on the city's South Side, said he must admit that he was to come to school sometimes. He said usually [gang members] don't try to pull that stuff until after school, but now they're trying to get kids coming to school in the morning. That's ridiculous. We shouldn't be scared to come somewhere — we should feel safe and have a safe learning environment. It don't play right; it's not right. Mr. Jordan is right, we should be afraid to go to school and shouldn’t be afraid to go outdoors because of fear of being gunned down in the streets.
This is a heavy toll of violence and Jordan and his classmates at Simeon know the toll of gang-related gun violence all too well. Greg Robinson, a shy, quiet freshman basketball player, was in the back seat of a car while returning home from a game when someone started shooting. He died trying to shield his young cousins from gunfire. Simeon has lost several other students to gun violence over the years, and it's far from the only Chicago high school affected. Gangs are prevalent throughout the city, and teenagers often have to cross dangerous turf to get to and from school. Some of the victims have been in gangs, but many have not. Some are targeted because they won't join a gang; others are mistaken for gang members or simply caught in the crossfire. "How could you even say, like, wrong place and wrong time?" says Ronnie Mosley, Simeon's 2009 senior class president. While rattling off the names of other area students killed in recent years, Mosley says these weren't kids who were in gangs or in trouble, or even doing things they shouldn't have been doing.
"Greg was at home. Chavez [Clarke] was here at Simeon on a Saturday getting credits to graduate. Blair [Holt] was on a bus on his way home," Mosley says. "No place is safe but possibly schools." "Your mind is immune to the violence," says Simeon senior Diedra Barnes. "You sad, but at the same time it feels like there's nothing you can do, because every time you turn on the TV, it's like, 'Oh, another CPS student is shot, or this kid is shot.' " Jordan said having his high school years marred by the constant danger of gun violence is leading him to attend college as far "away from the city as possible; that's why he is going to [go] all the way to the East Coast. He refused to live his life in fear." Jordan will attend the Citadel in South Carolina this fall. Jordan’s family has told him when he leaves, don’t come back. Is this what the citizens of Chicago should be telling your young if they survive the violence in the street? Is the message in Chicago to tell youth that survive the violence to leave the city and never to come back.
That seems like the message as clergyman try to deal with this issue. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church in the same neighborhood as Simeon, is outraged at the violence. "What kind of crazy day do we live in, where our children are afraid to come home and go to school?" Pfleger says. Outside of his church, Pfleger flies the American flag upside down — something the U.S. Flag Code states should only be done as a signal of distress and a dire need for help. "Well, this is a dire need," Pfleger says. "This is a distress signal we're putting up saying we need help. We want to sound the alarm; we want a call for helping us deal with children being shot down in our city streets." Some veterans' groups accuse the priest of desecrating the flag in a publicity stunt, but others, including a group called Veterans Against Violence, have joined Pfleger and his cause.
Pfleger wants the country to respond to the problem of urban violence in the same way it responds to what he says are much lesser threats, like the swine flu. "We effectively called a consciousness of a nation in 48 hours on H1N1. A billion dollars was released from the administration to deal with it," Pfleger says. "Well, how come we can't be as comprehensive and as aggressive with blood on our streets of our children?" Still the enormous gang population in the city of Chicago is not going away no matter who is involved. Gun violence is so pervasive in Chicago because of the sheer number of gang members, according to Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis. "We have the largest gang population of any city in the United States," Weis says. "The only city that rivals us is Los Angeles."
Weis says that while L.A.'s gang population is estimated to be somewhere between 55,000 and 70,000, he estimates there are at least 100,000 gang members in Chicago. The Chicago Police Department is targeting those entrenched gangs throughout the city in several ways. One is by what he calls "hardening the terrain," or having officers saturate certain areas such as parks, street corners and alleys that are known for gang activity. In addition, Weis says the Police Department has a specialized gang unit. "They focus on the actual worst of the worst gang members: the people who are making the decisions, who should be shot, the people who are actually pulling the triggers," Weis says. "And they go out every day with a list of targets, trying to find these people, these persons of interest, and locate them and try to catch them."
Weis adds that the Chicago Police Department is working to improve community relations. Distrust of the police has long been a problem in Chicago. And the city is cracking down on curfew violations, to get kids off the street when they're most at risk. Radical approaches are being adopted to deter gang and gun violence such as the Chicago schools are teaching conflict resolution skills to students, and they are trying to defuse disputes between gangs and cliques so they don't escalate later when students are out of school. Weis says the strategies appear to be working. "We're down about 15 percent in homicides," he says, compared to the first few months of last year. And the number of school-age victims is down, too, according to Weis. However Weis comments don’t take into account we still have 4 months to go in this year because he is comparing that the 50 school children homicides in 2008 which was the highest in seven years.
Still Weis announced additional summertime tactics aimed at reducing gun and gang violence in Chicago but even those tactics have not fully dealt with the problem properly as the violence has increased well into the summer with at least 6 youth being gunned down at a funeral early this month. But the superintendent and others say policing alone is not enough to solve the complex problems that are costing too many young people their lives. "Complex problems require complex solutions," says Simeon senior Ronnie Mosley. "I think, you know, we have to kind of be radical in our approaches." Mosley, who will attend Morehouse College in Atlanta in the fall, has led rallies and marches against gun violence with his classmates. He and other students traveled to the Illinois State Capitol to push for an assault weapons ban, a state limit of one handgun purchase a month, and other "common-sense gun laws" — none of which has passed.
One such bill, which had the support of Chicago students who had lost too many classmates to gunshots, failed by just five votes. "We were devastated," Mosley says. "It's kind of like a slap in the face," adds Diedra Barnes. "It makes you feel like nothing is being done and nothing is happening. We march and we try to protest and, it's like, for two weeks [the shootings] ceased and then out of nowhere, bam, somebody else died." But Barnes, Mosley and other students say they'll continue their battle against gangs and gun violence in Chicago. They say preventing youth violence starts with them — in their homes, neighborhoods and schools. However the Chicago Public School students who have been killed and most of them victims of gunshots as well as the scores of other Chicago children and teenagers who have been wounded in shootings, and the concerns that the gun violence has escalated is deep sociological problem plaguing the city. The story speaks to a few key issues prevalent in the criminology field.
W.J. Wilson’s classic 1997 text, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, discusses how in Chicago’s most impoverished neighborhoods, those families who could afford to leave, did. As crime escalated, educated African American professionals, who once lived in those communities, bolted for the burbs. Thus, Chicago ghettos were left without those role models for the youth and young adults left behind. In turn, the unemployed and those working in the informal economy became all the more visible for young people. This phenomenon is seen through Jordan’s plans, as another intelligent, motivated, college-bound youth is encouraged to never return to his Chicago community. The other structural problem presented in this story is the proliferation of guns, which is a global issue more so than simply a local issue. It is clear that Chicago police, clergy and others have tried to implement things to address the problems but conflict resolution programs and increase in police presence won’t solve this issue. In fact this is still a relatively small-scale response to a macro problem, and therefore, will not likely result in major improvements.
The Chicago Police Department is targeting those entrenched gangs throughout the city in several ways. One is by what he calls "hardening the terrain," or having officers saturate certain areas such as parks, street corners and alleys that are known for gang activity. A few concerns manifest from this approach. First, again, it is a reaction-based intervention, and thus, will not fix root issues. A positive that can develop from increased police presence is that some communities with high crime rates do not feel that they can move forward with crime prevention programming until criminal elements have been removed from their neighborhoods. Unfortunately, what tends to happen more frequently with increased police presence is greater tension between the police and neighborhood residents. In addition, more arrests in these communities contribute further to the already disproportionately high number of poor, young men of color in the criminal and juvenile justice systems, largely for non-violent crimes. As California has learned, prison over-crowding is also a major factor that contributes to state debt and a cutback in social services (e.g., education, health care), making the unintended rippling effects of amplified police enforcement quite harmful.
The one structural area that Chicago is doing right is in the form of prevention which is gun control. Complex problems require complex solutions. Since President Obama has pushed for increased gun control, there has been increased public sentiment for the individual right to bear arms. Recent research, however, has shown that the easier it is to obtain a gun in one’s community, the more likely homicide rates increase, and that the ease with which people can obtain guns is greater in minority communities. Other research has shown that “Licensed dealers who kept no records or falsified records were the preferred source of supply for street gun merchants” and that while the number of licensed gun dealers who are corrupt is low, corrupt dealers still account for a huge portion of guns illegally trafficked and used in crimes. An example described from this study:
In a notable diversion involving 1,200 guns, a savvy vendor bypassed retail sources by using a forged Federal firearms license to buy guns directly from an unwitting distributor. After obliterating most of the serial numbers, the trafficker resold the guns to three other unlicensed peddlers in bulk quantities. Dealer corruption emerged as a surprisingly significant source of supply. Gun tracing disposed that some retailers had not only failed to account for incoming guns but also ignored State registration requirements. Malfeasance licensees was particularly evident in the casework, as 71 percent (13,667) of the diverted guns passed through 15 licensed dealers who made unrecorded or misrecorded sales to individuals and unlicensed vendors.
In addition, the study notes that citizens without criminal records can easily purchase guns from vendors and then re-sell them or give them to others – what they refer to as a straw purchase. Also significant was theft from gun distributors. In these cases, the gun venders are not at fault, but the ease with which guns can be obtained (either through surrogate purchasing or theft) is obvious. Increasing gun control through intensified background checks, not having gun retailers located in commercial sectors, and maintaining better oversight of retailers would not necessarily stop conflict between youth, but it would certainly mitigate the lethality.
So with information and studies like this, show that the war on our youth in Chicago goes beyond the normal ramifications. In fact radical action isn’t just needed to address this issue but it must be a combination of efforts that involves politicians, community leaders, students, parents, clergy and law enforcement all working together to combat the fear. The fear that many of the residents of Chicago has is unheard of and very uncommon. The fear that at any moment their child or themselves can be shot while in public has evolved into something never heard of. In fact Chicago has never seen anything like this before but for the last 3 years Chicago’s violence has gotten worse and worse because it’s as if morals have been lost in all of this. There used to be certain places where gangs would not shot or dare to disgrace but Chicago’s young assassins have no boundaries and no limits because they have lost their sanity and moral character. The fear in Chicago’s street is something unseen and unheard of and it seems as if it gets worse and worse as the weeks go on. Therefore it is clear that if Chicago’s residents is to change from being fearful to being heroic, it will take a collaborative effort from all Chicago residents to deal with this problem.
No one can deny that if we don’t solve the violence in Chicago now than the youth in the city will continue to grow up in fear and those that make it out of the city will be told never to return as a result of the constant violence plaguing the streets. Chicago’s streets are under attack and this is a weekly assault on the lives of not just ordinary Chicago residents but the future of Chicago. Thus if we are go change the violence, the bloodshed, and the constant borage on the lives of future Chicago residents than this has to begin now because this issue has gone unaddressed for far too long. We must save our youth in Chicago right now so that they can grow up and be doctors, lawyers and the President of the United States of America. This is the moment to end the youth violence, the gang violence and gun violence in the streets of Chicago because this story is not nothing new but the rate at which it is occurring brings me images of the violence in the streets of Los Angeles and New York during the 1980s. This is why Chicago’s issue is even greater because this is war on our youth more so than a war on drugs or guns. Chicago’s youth are caught in the cross hairs of senseless violence where they are only safe in school. This is shameful, this is ridiculous but most of all this is uncalled for. So let’s end this war on our youth and let’s help save the future of Chicago forever.
SAVE OUR YOUTH NOW!
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