Please note: The opinions expressed in this article are solely that of the author and not of the Chicago Police Department and/or its officers.
Last Friday, while my fellow college-aged friends were out enjoying their break from a life of academia, I was in the City of Chicago riding around in some of the roughest neighborhoods and gang torn territories in the country. From 5:00pm to 9:00pm, prime time in the City, I rode with the Chicago Police Department detectives on the north side and gained some first hand experience as to what really happens in the second city.
2 murdered. 2 shot. Police officer shot in robbery attempt. Gang activity at a new high. To many, these are headlines that simply become part of the daily routine. Growing up in the suburbs, there wasn’t a time that I can remember that I didn’t turn on the news to find a report of Chicago’s violence on the television screen. It’s become an everyday occurrence that many just shrug off as being “Chicago.”
After receiving a tour of Area North’s Detective Division, signing the appropriate waivers and donning my bullet proof vest (which hopefully I wasn’t going to need), we hit the streets to experience the reality behind the headlines. For the first couple hours, it was quiet as we journeyed through the various blocks of the north-side neighborhoods, the detective being sure to point out where the gang boundaries lay. At one point, we drove past Truman College, a public college run by the City of Chicago, where the 33-year veteran explained t0 me how this was “the DMZ” as far as gang territory goes. He went on to explain how two rival gangs, the Vice Lords and Black P Stones, occasionally bounced over their borders to pop a couple shots off at rival gang members right in front of the College. I was astounded by the fact that a school wasn’t even considered safe or “off limits” for gangs. I thought of my own college, nestled in the rural-ness of Michigan. We drove on.
We continued through various other neighborhoods, the detective sharing with me war stories of shootings from the past, always being sure to let me know whose “hood” we were in. Moving away from the major thoroughfares, it wasn’t uncommon for us to see gangs gathered in front of apartments, giving us the stare as we drove by. “Don’t watch their faces,” the detective instructed me, “check out their hands. That’s what’s gonna hurt you.” I took his advice .
Journeying west, we stopped for dinner before we were to trek into the west-side neighborhoods of Austin, some of the most violent in the city. Not even 10 minutes into our dinners, we got the call we had been waiting for all night. The detective answered his phone and informed me that “we grabbed a shooting.” In the car, heading east towards the lake with the lights flashing and siren blaring, I asked the detective where we were heading. “Truman,” he answered, the same place we were just at 30 minutes before.
We arrived on the scene and immediately noticed the shell casings that were scattered across the sidewalk and street. By the time we arrived, the scene was already secured, the evidence marked and the victim, a 17-year old boy, on the way to the hospital. The Detective gave me a tour of the crime scene as the victims bike lay propped against a concrete wall. As we examined the scene, the patrol officer relayed the story of how the boy was riding his bike when an unknown individual started shooting at him, luckily not hitting anything except the boy’s leg. The whole time, I kept thinking, “It’s right in front of a school!” After receiving the information from the patrol officers, we went down the hospital where the Detective interviewed the boy, about the same age as my sister, about the incident. It was most likely gang related- no surprise. We went back to the station, did the paperwork and the investigation began.
I don’t tell this story to scare people, I tell this story because it’s real. Behind the stories that grow ever-increasingly meaningless with each passing day, there are real people. Real families. Real police officers.
Chicago, the home of our own President Barack Obama, has the highest violent crime rates in the country. Simultaneously, it has one of the largest gang populations in the country, with somewhere around 70,000 gang members. Where do you even begin to address the problem? The thing is, it’s not only a local problem – it’s a national problem.
The gangs are fueled by narcotics coming from all over the world, but our government isn’t willing to fully protect our borders. Illegal aliens come into the city and utilize resources that don’t belong to them, but the government chooses to grant them amnesty. The regular, law-abiding citizens can’t get guns to protect themselves, but no matter what, the bad-guys are always able to get guns and hurt more people. Entitlement programs run rampant, going to non-deserving people who live off tax payer dollars while engaging in criminal enterprise. The list goes on and on.
If you want to stop the violence in Chicago and across the country, you need to fix the root of the problem. Go after these issues. We as Americans need to demand a solution from our elected officials; there’s no excuse for these things! It’s time we stood up for what was right. Don’t just talk about a solution, demand one. Lead the way and take America back – that’s what we need to do.
Shout out to all the Chicago Police Officers out there. Stay safe- you’re all doing the right thing. Keep it up!
Hank Prim | Hillsdale College | @HankPrim
I think you need a much stronger or at least supported argument to jump from gang members to illegal immigrants. They are separate issues with occasional overlap, though from the article it seems they should be viewed as a single issue. If that is an argument you are going to make you should really give it some support other than Gangs use drugs, drugs can come from south of the border, illegals come from south of the border.
As someone who lives in Chicago I can tell you that no one wants the problem addressed more than the people of Chicago. If you seriously want to investigate and write about this topic please do more than tell a story and drop buzz topics like gun ownership and welfare. How Obama is relevant other than shallow boogy man style, “look at the giant liberal big brother machine,” I don’t know. The recent spike in violence has to do more with slum busting which decentralized the power structures within the gangs, leading to increased number of factions and then more “turf” based violence.
Incorporating welfare seems like an easy way to score points but I am not sure just mentioning it is enough. There is an underlying assumption in this piece that criminals are criminals which is an oversimplification. If that were true breaking bad would have been a terribly dis-interesting show. Poverty and slum culture leads to gang membership. Poor people need money, crime is (true or not) seen as the only way of getting money then spirals into the system we have. Welfare then, for those who support such programs, could help divert people from gang affiliation by precluding some of the financial incentive to pedal drugs. If you want to be taken seriously don’t just drop buzz topics to rally people who agree with you be better than that. Preempt the arguments of your opponents and address them. Actually analyze an issue rather than sloppily fit as many of your political maxims into an essay as possible.
Matt:
The goal of the article was to provide individuals with realistic take on the situation in Chicago, not to analyze every specific cause and outcome- please rest assured, it was not my intention to rally support by dropping “buzz topics.”
As far as illegal immigration goes, the connection is simple: Many illegal immigrants transport illicit and illegal goods across the border. These goods become part of the black market which fund gang operations. For the most part, the livelihood of gangs depend on some sort of “business” – most of the time narcotics. By increasing border security, we are cutting off the lifeblood for many of these gangs.
On welfare: If this was taken as a blanket statement, my apologies. My point was that through various entitlement programs, individuals lose the incentive to work actual jobs, leading them to the lucrative market of gangs and narcotics. I agree wholeheartedly that those who need help deserve to receive it. However, those gang members and their families who continue to live off welfare (and there are many) while committing crimes need to be punished for their actions.
Hank,
I appreciate the response, I have not had many opportunities to engage with the authors here. (my email was submitted via posting so if you wanted to continue through that medium I would welcome the discussion)
On Illegal immigration. I will grant that your argument is valid logically but I would caution that the premises you are relying on are unsound, or at least they seem to be. Unless there are numbers I am unaware of (and there very well may be such info out there) it is dangerous to link illegal immigrants as a group and drug trafficking as that tends not to be the case. (Similar statements were made in 2010 found here. If politifact is uncouth I can try to find different documentation.) I would agree that the cartels can coerce migrants to run drugs, but the drug problem long predates the illegal immigration boom. If your point is to say that gang funding could be dented by increased border security, then why include “Illegal aliens come into the city and utilize resources that don’t belong to them, but the government chooses to grant them amnesty?” It does not seem to relate to gangs as much as it does a different issue and creates a backdoor connection that you may not have intended.
On welfare, I am not sure how “Entitlement programs run rampant, going to non-deserving people who live off tax payer dollars while engaging in criminal enterprise,” is not a blanket statement. While I am sure there exist people who are both on welfare and involved in gang activity, the statement would be much more persuasive if there were some data presented with it. The argument of whether the existence of welfare creates a lack of work ethic is for another thread I think, but the sentiment that it is lack of motivation that causes people into criminal enterprise I think is off the mark. If presented with two equally lucrative source of income carying equal amounts of work, I would think most gang members (before getting to the point of blood in blood out membership) would pick the legal option, though admittedly that argument may be susceptible to attack based on the cultural glorification of the drug trade (but who doesn’t love Pacino in Scarface?! :P) Those committing crimes need to be punished for the crime they commit, absolutely I agree with that sentiment. I am not sure that the link between that and welfare is as implicit as you make it seem
-Matt
I am very confused but what you think a good way to reduce violence is, in both Chicago and the United States?
First, “The regular, law-abiding citizens can’t get guns to protect themselves”. How do you figure that? Violent felons and the mentally ill can easily get their hands on weapons, and its even easier for law-abiding Americans to do so. Go to any gun show or buy online in a private transaction- no background check. It’s a huge reason why crazy people can easily get their hands on guns. Law-abiding Americans can do it even easier since they can pass background checks.
You say that the government will not commit to “fully protect our borders”. We have extremely long borders, and to “fully protect it” would require an enormous expansion of the federal government, and even then it would be impossible. The USSR/East Germany tried to “fully protect” the border between East and West Germany to prevent people from getting out. They had a wall, guard towers, and unprecedented amounts of manpower- and they couldn’t stop it. Lots of people still got through the border all the time. And it’s much easier to stop people from leaving then coming in, and it was a much smaller border.
We should try to secure the border as effectively as possible, but “fully securing” it is wildly unrealistic and the attempt would create an enormous expansion of federal power and waste of money. It’s as futile quest as prohibition on alcohol was or the war on drugs we’ve been losing for 40 years.
Militarizing the border also has the effect of keeping undocumented immigrants IN the United States since they know it’s expensive to cross the border. So instead of going home, they stay here. Militarizing the border is a major reason why our undocumented immigrant population has exploded. This isn’t my personal speculation, and I’d be happy to send you the professional opinions and data to support it.
I didn’t see any solutions that are proven to reduce crime, and that experts on criminology recommend. It’s hard to demand solutions when you don’t offer clear policy choices.
Here are 10 good ones:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/22/lead-abatement-alcohol-taxes-and-10-other-ways-to-reduce-the-crime-rate-without-annoying-the-nra/