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| Chicago is more violent then Iraq or Afghanistan; Drones should police it |
President Obama just routed his re-election campaign through Aurora, Colorado. But when will he visit Chicago to be photographed consoling the even more numerous victims of violence there?
The demented action of James Holmes, who allegedly killed 12 people and wounded 59 wounded at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises on July 19, has become the talk of the world, overshadowing all other news stories.
Specifically, it overshadowed the story of 3 people dying from gunshots and 21 being shot all across Chicago on July 21. Yet this is merely a continuation of the violence that has left America’s Second City in a state that one cop compared to “tribal warfare.”Michael Skolnik, writing for the leftist Global Grind, satirized the situation with this headline: “53 WHITE People Shot! 10 Dead! One Weekend!” [May 30, 2012]:
- Over the weekend of February 20, seven died and more than 18 were shot.
- Over the weekend of March 19, 10 died and forty were wounded by individuals using guns;
- Over the May 28 Memorial Day weekend, 40 were shot and at least 10 killed;
- Over the weekend of June 11, eight were shot dead and more than 40 people wounded;
- Over the weekend of June 18, 35 were injured and seven killed in separate shootings;
- on the eve of July 4, 15 were wounded—including a ten-year-old girl – in a six hour time period;
Imagine you saw that headline. Imagine you woke up on Monday morning and those words were spread across the top of your local city paper. By the time you read it, the Governor would have already deployed the National Guard. The President would have already made a statement. A curfew would have been set for anyone under 18. Schools would have been closed.
Check points would have been set up around the city. Every active police officer would be called into work. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News would all break into their regular scheduled programming for a special report. Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine that fifty-three WHITE people were shot in one weekend in one city by fifty-three different people. Just for a moment, imagine. You can open your eyes now...
But for the father of a beautiful seven year old girl who was shot while playing in front of her house on the South Side of Chicago, this dream quickly became a nightmare.Skolnik’s point: no one cares that black people are killing one another in Chicago at a horrifying rate. (Or maybe they are too scared of the Political Correctness police to mention it).
But what Skolnik can’t come to terms with: it is the black people of Chicago who are responsible for pulling the triggers.
Nor, of course, can Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy—he has blamed the Pilgrims [Police chief blames 'Pilgrims', cops for Chicago violence, By Bill Kelly, Washington Times, June 27, 2003] and Sarah Palin [Top Cop: Gun Laws Akin to 'Racism', By BJ Lutz, NBCChicago, June 23, 201].
But a recent article in the Chicago Tribune paints a much more precise picture of the dysfunction and chaos:
Violent crime has long afflicted minorities in Chicago at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and the spike in homicides in the first half of this year provides an especially stark measure: 201 of the 259 homicide victims were African-American.Read the rest there and comment on it here.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, William Bratton can't be bothered to acknowledge the racial angle to the gun crime in Chicago:
The city of Chicago has been screaming about its violent streets this summer, and rightly so. Public outrage over murder is a healthy sign that a city has not become numb to violence. Through July 19, this year's murder rate is up 31% from last year, with 289 Chicagoans killed, and shootings are up 6%. But these statistics don't tell the whole story.
For one, they obscure the fact that Chicago—like many American cities—has steadily reduced crime over the last two decades. From 1990-94, Chicago averaged 900 murders a year. From 2007-11, that figure was 450—unacceptably high, but a dramatic decline. Over this period, violent crime also fell 50%.Personally, the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/Drones to constantly fly over these high-crime areas ("turf" -- as Bratton calls it) would seem like a great idea; more importantly, by locking up more Black people in Chicago - and throughout the nation - the violent crime rate and murder rates have dropped.
According to a study completed in May by Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, Chicago boasts 59 gangs that divide into 625 factions (and include, according to Chicago magazine, some 70,000-125,000 members and associates). This in a city of 2.5 million residents. The gangs have largely dispensed with any pretense of "protecting" a neighborhood or ethnicity. This is not the Sharks and the Jets. Some are corporate entities that control drug-dealing enterprises. Turf means protecting lucrative corners for dealing drugs, and competitors or interlopers are dealt with violently.
Because of effective work by the Chicago police and federal authorities (including the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI), many experienced kingpins are in prison. This has made some territories ripe for takeover. Younger leaders who have moved up are short on judgment and long on guns, which account for 85% of Chicago's murders.
That's why the War on Drugs must be defended vociferously. That, and harsher sentencing.
Mr. Bratton also wrote:
Fortunately, a lot can be done to deal effectively with gangs and urban violence. In the 1990s, American cities ended almost 25 years of steady crime growth and deteriorating quality of life. Violent crime nationwide fell almost 40%, serious property crime by more than 30%. Those decreases exceeded 60% in many cities—including Boston, New York and Los Angeles, where I served—and continued into the 2000s.
One reason for this was the philosophy of "community policing," which focuses on establishing partnerships and seeking to prevent crime, as opposed to just responding to it. This philosophy was a revolutionary shift away from the strategies that prevailed after the race riots and assassinations of the 1960s, when influential voices (such as the LBJ-established Kerner Commission) tied police "professionalism" to reactive metrics such as how fast it takes to respond to a complaint or to make an arrest after a crime. The established view was that crime was caused by poverty, racism and other matters that were outside of police control, so police could aim only to respond effectively.
I criticized this theory because crime is caused by individuals whose environments and behaviors can be positively shaped by police work. Two decades of evidence now bear this out—as do the past few years, when America's economic slump hasn't led to a crime wave, as the old theory would have predicted.
Mr. Bratton: Please consult "Color of Crime: Chicago" that HW put together by utilizing the 2009 Chicago Police Department Annual Report:
It looks to me like 96.8 percent of homicide, 93.3 percent of rape, 96 percent of robbery, and 91.8 percent of aggravated assault – 94.5 percent of violent crime in Chicago - is committed by African-Americans and Hispanics.The crime problem in Chicago has a color, and yet Mr. Bratton can't be bothered to address in the Wall Street Journal. But he did let slip a solid dig at the "poverty causes crime" theory that Disingenuous White Liberals (DWL) cling to.
Put UAV/Drones over Chicago (flying over those parts of the city where crime is most prevalent), and in two months time crime rates will drop even further.
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