Identifying the problem is a first step
Tuesday, May 10, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller
* This data makes things seem significantly less random…
Confronted with the bloodiest weekend in Chicago since being named police superintendent six weeks ago, Eddie Johnson on Monday called the gun violence “completely unacceptable” and said the dozens of shootings highlight “the uphill battle” confronting police.
More than 50 people were shot, eight fatally, between Friday afternoon and early Monday, the city’s most violent weekend since the end of September, according to a Tribune analysis. […]
He focused his remarks on how much of the bloodshed is being driven by about 1,300 individuals on the Police Department’s “strategic subject list” — those believed to be most prone to violence as a victim or offender.
About 78 percent of the homicide victims and about 84 percent of the nonfatal shooting victims this weekend were on the list, he said.
“That means essentially we know who they are,” he told reporters at 50th Street and South Karlov Avenue, where a Chicago police officer fatally shot a bank robbery suspect on Monday. “Oftentimes, they have gang affiliations, and many have had previous arrests and convictions.”
Not sure what they can do about those 1,300 people except try to keep some tabs on them, but it’s not like you can assign a cop to every person on the list. Perhaps the feds can help since they have experience with their terror watch lists.
- Steve - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 11:54 am:
If you’ll notice most of the violence happened in certain neighborhoods. If those neighborhoods weren’t being subsidized : over time they would change. When the Section 8 contracts expire , let them expire. Time to try something new.
- Keyser Soze - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 11:58 am:
Is there an over-under as to how long it will take for the 1,300 to eliminate one another?
- walker - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 11:59 am:
Steve: Wow! It’s all about subsidized Section 8 housing?
Can you expand on that rationale?
- Precinct Captain - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 11:59 am:
What intelligence is this list based on? And for those with criminal records on this list, couldn’t the city offer targeted services: job training, mental health counseling, adult education?
- Ghost - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:05 pm:
if you build community centers w/ pools, sports equipment and put in heavy security these help to reduce crime. BUT its expensive.
- Robert the Bruce - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:09 pm:
Excellent point, Precinct Captain. I wonder what, if anything, they are doing with that list.
But I don’t trust the 78%/84% numbers.
- Anon221 - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:09 pm:
The other 22%-
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-man-shot-while-eating-dinner-in-brighton-park-20160508-story.html
- Cable Line Beer Gardener - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:14 pm:
Further on in the article, they stated one of members of the list had been arrested 40 times. How can someone arrested that many times still be on the streets? much less be rehabilitated?
- Belle - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:14 pm:
I see spots on the local news about new things coming to Englewood. The other night, there was a reminder that a Whole Foods was being built. They also showed a new hiring and training center. I think there is a focused effort to get people to consider getting financially involved.
- astuishin - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:18 pm:
you could assign one cop to every person on the list. law and order is needed. bring in the state police, sheriff, national guard. all hands on deck to stop the violence. Round the clock monitoring, patrols, officers on all the most dangerous corners securing. Colombia did this the 90s and 00s and has seen a massive reduction in crime.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:24 pm:
===you could assign one cop to every person on the list===
1300 people, three shifts, plus weekends, and you’re talking thousands of cops.
- Lucky Pierre - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:25 pm:
The statistics on how many of these 1,300 people have been arrested 40-80 times and are still on the streets is mind blowing. For all of the talk in the current Presidential debate about how Bill Clinton’s reforms of our criminal justice system went too far, the current status quo of catch and release is a miserable failure.
- Anony - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:28 pm:
How about aggressive policing and prosecution of these 1300 people? How about three strikes? I know, they have rights, and the police are far from perfect; but at some point we have to consider the rights of those these 1300 will maim and kill.
- atsuishin - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:37 pm:
==1300 people, three shifts, plus weekends, and you’re talking thousands of cops.==
I’d be willing to sacrifice and support the increase in taxes. Returning these neighborhoods to safety would finally allow them to begin to recover. Neighborhoods near wealthy areas particularly the w side are ripe for investment if they only could be made safer. Urban living is in demand but the city cant take advantage of it with these crime rates.
- Amalia - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:48 pm:
why in the world would you think it is random? because they shoot and miss and hit unintended victims occasionally? the problem is gangs and known criminals. they are active. they have moved out of a concentrated area because the housing developments were wiped out in a stretch. there are turf fights over drug sales including when leaders are put into prison. they decide to drive on Lake Shore drive and all sorts of expressways and shoot from cars. ask the police. this is not some epidemic that suddenly affects people except when the jerks drive into your area and start shooting at each other or breaking into your garage or home. gun charges, call the feds.
- Ghost - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 12:53 pm:
More copa wont fix this. The problem is in part keeping kids out of gangs by giving them meaningful and supportive activites. the best example of thisnis the Jesse White tumblers. gotta save the kids to fox this problem. community police stations also would help, but yah gotta get the kids before they join the gnags for long term somutions
- Anony - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 1:02 pm:
Ghost - can’t see how the tumblers will soften the 1300 thugs in question. Eventually the government succeeded in diminishing the mafia through the use of RICO. The gang problem would diminish greatly were the political will present to do so. If it didn’t happen with a Chicagoan in the White House, when will it? When will voters hold their elected officials to account?
- Steve - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 1:04 pm:
-Walker-
I’m just repeating what a 25 year veteran of the Chicago Police force told me who has worked the Westside. There’s a clear pattern here, a concentrated area of people who 1)live in Section 8 housing or near Section 8. 2)Came from single family homes. 3) Fathers generally not around. 4)High unemployment 5)Minors who frequently violate curfew. 6)Drug culture.
- Payback - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 1:38 pm:
“bring in the state police, sheriff, national guard.” The National Guard is a component of the U.S. Army and cannot arrest citizens unless martial law is declared. Ever hear of separation of powers or the U.S. Constitution?
“Colombia did this the 90s and 00s and has seen a massive reduction in crime.” Colombia and most south American countries have a nationalized paramilitary police force, many of which have probably killed, tortured, or “disappeared” more people than the drug cartels in the last 40 years. That’s what you want in America?
- Zonker - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 1:54 pm:
Drug transactions and gang violence don’t happen in living rooms. It happens on street corners where people drive by and pick up their dope. Often it’s under viaducts or street corners. If you deny the gangs the streets by stepped up patrols, you take the territory instead of stalking the person. The police know this. They just don’t want the danger of doing it. It takes real guts to shut down gangs, and many just don’t want the bloody mess it’ll take to shut them down. Hard to blame them.
- Keyrock - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 2:08 pm:
A more targeted bail system, with a meaningful pre trial report going to the judge before a bail decision, would help. So would better pre sentencing reports, and a more consistent application of consequences for serious probation violations.
- some doofus - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 2:26 pm:
Ghost,
The problem is not keeping kids out of gangs by giving them more meaningful activities. You’re looking at a situation where the kids willing to take the risk do far better slinging drugs, defending drug turf and catching a case every now and then than similarly skilled kids do by playing by the rules. If you can figure out a way to get kids with little education $30/hour mostly for standing around, maybe you can solve it, but I guarantee the moral hazard of that will create a society that completely doesn’t work.
The kid shot on the fence that has been so heavily profiled. He had been boasting about keeping other gangs off his block. He was clad in the profits of drug sales. A public swimming pool doesn’t help much with that. The problem isn’t just that kids join gangs and behave violently in order to rise to the top of drug hierarchies. It’s that the incentives to do so are incredibly strong. Most of those incentives aren’t negative (ie, nothing better to do) they’re positive incentives - you can do really, really well this way, at least till you get shot. But that’s a lottery teenage minds have evolved to accept.
You have to have a way to make sure that violent drug merchants consistently do badly, that it turns bad for them visibly and quickly. That’s what will stop this.
Police had made vast strides in the 10 years from 2003 to 2013, most of it in just 2 years in 2003-2005. A great deal of that progress has been reversed in the last year and a half.
There are entrenched attitudes at the CPD that have a negative effect. But the greatest effect of the CPD is to diminish violence. That has been lost sight of. And the corruption that afflicts Chicago and Illinois in so many other ways has its effect on the CPD. If we had a Mayor who hadn’t made his fortune on “investment banking” that mostly involved regulated companies, talking to a superintendent who had no conjugal relations with any of the “study groups” that are at the heart of promotion decisions in CPD, I bet rank and file cops would feel a lot better about new directives. But instead, we have a cynical administration saying “you guys are racist” to the group of people asked to police a very violent setting.
And then we have people saying “just build swimming pools.”
- Downstate - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 2:27 pm:
Rio de Janeiro is known for their favelas, the slums built into the hillsides overlooking the swanky beaches of the tourist city.
The favelas were a crime-ridden area that became so bad, even the cops wouldn’t enter. The criminal element enforced its own form of justice.
Finally, the city fathers had enough and enacted a “pacification program”. They swarmed the area and targeted the “bad actors”. A form of our national guard still provides occasional patrols and road blocks.
But the place has improved to the point that tourism buses now ply the same road where shootouts occurred just a decade ago.
Is it a perfect solution? No. But, it’s one that’s made a difference.
- some doofus - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 2:30 pm:
When I write the above, I think part of the problem is that we clamp down as hard on drugs as on violence. Right now, if you’re going to sell drugs, setting morals aside, on a logical basis, you might as well shoot your rival. You’re unlikely to get caught, and the profits to be made by driving off the competition are huge. That arbitrage fuels these decisions and empowers those willing to commit violence. Less attention to drug sales, more to violence would set a different standard. This doesn’t have to mean legalization. But it’s about the priorities of police, the feds and everyone in the system. If your gang shoots, we’ll track everyone down. If your gang doesn’t shot, we’re a little less likely to pay attention …
- Frank Drebin - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 3:22 pm:
@steve
Really, its Section 8. I think one of the worst entitlement programs in our country is Mortgage Welfare. Or, in other words, the mortgage interest deduction.
Just another way the guv-mint chooses winners and losers and a waste of tax payers money.
- Liberty - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 3:40 pm:
Didn’t Quinn try to keep kids out of trouble by paying them with “jobs”?
The feds tried to break up neighborhoods with scattered site housing didn’t they?
- Hit or Miss - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 3:45 pm:
“How about aggressive policing and prosecution of these 1300 people?”
Is/has the State of Illinois conducted any research into what makes this small number of people so violent? How much money is there is the Rauner budget to study let alone solve this problem?
- Earnest - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 3:58 pm:
Superintendent Johnson did a great job of pulling together real numbers and better defining part of the problem. That’s a great way to start. Solutions are complex.
I return to a major part of the solution being social services. If you’re born into poverty, in a poor neighborhood, you may not get to even experience what we might consider middle class life. Before and after school programs, health care, nutrition, financially stable parents/home life, well-equipped and maintained schools, supports for parents…they’re all a part of the solution.
- Amalia - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 4:04 pm:
what makes them so violent? greed, for starters. it takes some cash, even if buying stolen goods, to get mommy those purses snatched from Neiman Marcus just before Mother’s Day. they don’t come free even if they are stolen by others. the culture of acquisitiveness is absolutely astounding.
- FormerParatrooper - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 4:08 pm:
If being in a gang, and living the “dream” of gang life is more attractive and lucrative that any job that can potentially come to these neighborhoods it will not solve the problem. The gang life must be more risky than it is now. Maybe as someone stated before we need something for these gangs like the RICO used against the mafia. It has to be something enforced, supported by the public and those who have to deal with these gangs in their neighborhoods. It will be expensive to do, to enforce and to imprison many offenders. We have to do something soon or that 1300 will have even more followers and recruit others to the lifestyle. The question is do we have the fortitude to do something directly to the offenders or are we going to just complain every time another person dies at the hands of the gangs?
- Anony - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 4:10 pm:
Hit - isn’t the crime problem in Chicago the responsibility of the city? Perhaps the feds can help if they are interested, which they haven’t been. Why these thugs do what they do is an interesting question, but don’t the people of the city have a civil right to be protected from crime?
- Rod - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 5:02 pm:
To Earnest: Superintendent Johnson did nothing in relationship to creating the “strategic subject list,” the basic program has existed since 2013. All he did was admit the list was now up to 1,300 without even noting that represented a massive increase in the size of the list as I note in a post above. The entire data base was funded by the Feds.
By the way in 2013 when the Tribune tried to visit some people on the list as it existed back then many were no longer at the addresses listed for them. So one has to wonder how updated it is. Go to my post at 1:15 pm for a link to that 2013 article.
- Amalia - Tuesday, May 10, 16 @ 5:21 pm:
spend some time at 26th and Cal. in court watch many mamas….mostly mamas…crying about how “my baby, my baby” is not guilty after it is clear that the offense in question is not remotely the first illegal thing they have done. the babies take care of the mamas. and it is sickening how the violence is condoned.
- Keyrock - Wednesday, May 11, 16 @ 2:25 am:
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.it/2016/05/detectives-assaulted.html
In addition to social services, effective treatment for the mentally ill, and economic development, certain repeat violent offenders just have to be kept in prison until they are too old to commit crimes. CPD knows who they are. The state’s attorney, courts, etc., have to be able to figure it out and apply sensible principles consistently.
- FirstTimer - Wednesday, May 11, 16 @ 1:37 pm:
Prison is no longer a deterrent. It is too easy. You can gain more knowledge in prison and learn to be a better gang(Security Threat Group)member. You have to make the “locked up” world/community harder or less comfy, so when a gangbanger does time they actually mind being locked up. We have so many areas of the state that need attention in our state forests, state right-of-ways, busting rock, or various not-for-profit jobs in this state that could be done by those locked up. Yet they are allowed to lay around 12 hours a day, go to yard, go to chow and watch TV whenever they want and usually cable or satellite depending on where the prison is. Give them a full 10 hour day of labor everyday learning to appreciate those who do work for a living. Some will be better for it. Others you will never change. Sure you could legalize marijuana and tax it so the profit is not on the street. Update the pharmaceutical system to where they are not so easily gathered from going to different healthcare professionals and then sold again on the street. Most of these things take money-Tax Money-that so many on this site are complaining about now. But no one wants a thug in their house, in their neighborhood, in their school. There has to be total restructuring from the neighborhood, the school, the family up, to even begin to address this problem. That in itself is not a government issue it is a personal issue. Personal to every Illinoisan in this state.