33 Comments - walker - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 11:37 am: Nothing is easy here. But putting as much organized intelligence, effort at identifying actors, infiltrating and disrupting these groups, as we do for potential foreign-inspired terrorists, would help a great deal. These gangs (assumption) do much more damage in loss of life in America than all the foreign-inspired terrorists combined. Instead, most of the public just pretends it isn’t their problem. - Anonymous - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 11:44 am: More law no. More police allocated properly probably yes. The ISP is severely understaffed just like Chicago. But it doesn’t help that the ISP has personnel allocated to so many units outside of patrol and are so top heavy with administrative personnel. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 11:45 am: ===More police allocated properly probably yes=== Poppycock. You’d need two on every corner. - Illinois Bob - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 11:54 am: I hate to say it, but we just have far too many people out there who don’t belong out of incarceration. It’s real blessing that no innocent bystanders were hurt or killed. No amount of police or spending will ever solve this problem. We have to change the culture that creates people like these. It will take changes to social stigma as well as government policy that creates the dysfunctional families that produce people like this, but there’s just too much money in “gangsta” culture, and votes for the pols, for that to happen…. - Saluki - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:02 pm: Then put two on every corner. If this body count does not call for desperate measures, then I am not sure what does… - AlfondoGonz - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:04 pm: Illinois Bob- Perhaps it is not the copious amount of money in “gansta” culture that is the draw, but the lack of discernible legitimate options. The amount of fake jewelry and knockoff gear you see gangbangers wearing suggests to me that they aren’t really making a mint. - Warthog - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:05 pm: Saluki, what corner do you want this weekend? - Last Bull Moose - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:12 pm: Taking the profits out of illegal drugs would help.Funding positive alternatives to gangs; groups that can provide a social structure with a way to gain status without violence would help. Working with youth to guide them on impulse control and acceptable non-violent responses to being frustrated or disrespected would help. Effecting these things would take leadership, people to do the time-consuming face to face work, funding, and courage. - Ghost - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:12 pm: We just need to shut down social services and school programs. call the poor lazy for not having healthcare and good schools. then refer to helping others as collectivist. end social services and most educational activites. eliminate food and healthcare, this will fix the problem. - titan - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:27 pm: I’m assuming this - from the description - is a gang shooting. I’d be totally stunned if the shooter car wasn’t gangstas, and the victim car was probably gangsta too (or else really unlucky dumb joyriders who were mistaken for gangstas). Many of the things that would put the real dent in gang related crime would generate the ire of civil libertarians and those activists keen on the minority rights/anti-discrimination stuff. - Winnin' - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:28 pm: But…Obama. - FPJ - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:29 pm: End the drug war — Not only would it undermine the finances of street gangs, but it would disrupt the criminal-producing assembly line that is our prison system. It is hard to be an upstanding member of society when a drug-related felony conviction essentially bars a person from meaningfully participating in society. While I’m on a roll here, let’s also void any non-violent drug convictions to really hit the reset button on this failed policy. - A Jack - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:30 pm: Many people want more police. Few people want to pay the additional taxes that added police would require. But neither more police nor more laws can fix something like this. - 47th Ward - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:35 pm: If you’re a young African-American male, you’re more likely to be in prison or a high school drop out than employed or in school. We accept this as some sort of failing on the part of these young men, and frankly, that might be true. But however these young men find themselves in this situation, idle with no marketable skills, it becomes our problem. Unless and until we do something to provide economic alternatives to a life of crime and street thuggery, we won’t be able to stem the violence. It doesn’t matter how they got there. We need to help them get out. - Belle - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:42 pm: School and jobs are the answer and it would take a generation or 2 for that to kick back into focus as the answer. Too many people don’t understand what they are lacking—they’re just frustrated and super angry - Freezeup - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:43 pm: Rich, I love ya Man, and I’m not going to change your mind, but the expressways are virtually unpatrolled. That makes a difference. Anybody can do anything on those expressways and their chances of seeing a cop are somewhere between “slim” and “none”. And while those troopers were assigned to the expressways, they were in and around all the gas stations and businesses off the exits. Those areas just off the exits are where most of these incidents on the expressways start. Those troopers WOULD help. But let’s be realistic, it would take 1985 ISP type staffing to make a difference and that isn’t going to happen. It’s moot. I do agree that cops aren’t THE solution but they would necessarily be PART of a solution. - go sox - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 12:57 pm: agree. see earlier post re: “Our collapsing mental and behavorial health care infrastructure” - Freezeup - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 1:11 pm: Go Sox. Yes. Absolutely. But it’s even more than that. It’s a geography where society has collapsed. What parts combine to create a society? How do you fix it when it’s so badly damaged or completely gone? This problem is big. Bigger than most can wrap their brains around. And we should be ashamed that we let it get this far. - Illinois Bob - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 1:21 pm: @Belle =School and jobs are the answer and it would take a generation or 2 for that to kick back into focus as the answer.= Not true. CPS spends a whopping $15K per student (more than Naperville), so the resources are already there and it does no good. Jobs? You need the skills to be employed, and people like the gangbangers don’t want to pay that price. It’s a matter of a culture that needs to change. Babies having babies out of wedlock needs to change. Creating social stigma for getting pregnant without a stable marriage needs to happen instead of subsidizing and rewarding it. Stop making “single mothers by choice” heroes for making bad decisions, and raise up those who wait until they can afford a family and have a husband in the house before having children. Make drug dealers and gang bangers pariahs in the community rather than role models. Once you become unpopular for behaving this way things will get better, but not until… - Papa2008 - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 1:28 pm: The solution is involved parents who take the time to teach their children proper conduct. Or administer a whuppin’ or two when appropriate. - NSideLady - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 1:41 pm: It’s not just cops. It’s the poverty and gang culture that has overtaken a certain segment of the city. People get shot near police stations. These criminals have no fear whatsoever. This problem with be solved with both policing and social services. First, police need support (maybe military) in handling the drug trade, which is a root of much of this violence. Second, the blight needs to be addressed through private-public partnerships and development. The criminal element needs to be physically dispersed. Socially, we have to disrupt the cycle of crime by removing the children and people who are trapped and want out of those dangerous environments and forcibly removing criminals who continue to terrorize communities. - MasterPiece - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 1:45 pm: No, Illinois Bob, more prisons and more prisoners is not the answer. Why is it that the U.S. already has the highest per capita imprisonment rate in the world? Or maybe we’re number 2? And how do you propose paying to staff these extra cell blocks? Certainly, higher taxes would be anathema…..cut fraud and waste, maybe? Your talking point has nothing to back it up. - pool boy - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 1:49 pm: Agree with last bull moose. My understanding is none of these cases have been solved. It is time for people that know something to do the right thing and not keep silent. - go sox - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 2:07 pm: this is not the venue to start posting ted talk links, but here’s one that’s relevant and timely and speaks to how more police and more laws cannot solve everything. Colin Powell: Kids need structure. “How can you help kids get a good start? In this heartfelt and personal talk, Colin Powell, the former U.S. Secretary of State, asks parents, friends and relatives to support children, starting before they even get to primary school, through community and a strong sense of responsibility.” www.ted.com/talks/colin_powell_kids_need_structure?language=en# - Apacolypse - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 2:38 pm: The problem is not solvable under the current political environment in urban areas. - Chicagonk - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 3:01 pm: Issues that are driving the gang violence in the city: 1) Lack of employment opportunities in the south and west side 2) Lax sentencing for repeat and violent offenders 3) Easy access to guns 4) The lack of civility in social media and the drill culture 5) The No Snitch code 6) Inexperienced police and ineffective police tactics 7) Decades of bad parenting - Illinois bob - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 3:16 pm: @chicagoonk =1) Lack of employment opportunities in the south and west side= That’s BS from Austin on the West side to Roseland on the South side you can get downtown and to the burbs in very short time. That’s why we spend a fortune supporting mass transit. =3) Easy access to guns= If you want ‘em, you can get ‘em regardless of how much useless law you make. =7) Decades of bad parenting= AND the government policy of supporting it and media that glorifies it. You’ve got it. BINGO! - wordslinger - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 3:51 pm: When any idiot can get easy access to guns and load, just like Chekov said, they’re bound to go off. You don’t have this level of gun violence in the rest of the Western world. Not even close. Not even Canada. That’s the risk we all take for some people’s “freedom” and “rights.” - Payback - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 4:11 pm: @ 12:29 pm- “End the drug war…” Best post of the day. But that would dismantle the profits of the police state. Look how even here, many posters first response is “more police.” Sad. @ 1:41 pm- “…police need support (maybe military) in handling the drug trade…” Right, using the military to enforce civil laws in the “war on drugs” (is George Bush 1 still President?) and militarizing the police even more. Ever hear of separation of powers or Posse Comitatus? I know for a fact that DEA agents were being given paramilitary training by the U.S. Army at Ft. Benning circa 1989-1990 to prepare them for raiding south American cocaine labs in the bad old days. That’s what you want here? Fear sells with the white baby boomers. - Last Bull Moose - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 4:41 pm: Wordslinger, Even within the United States the level of gun violence varies greatly. Where I live, it is not a major concern. And yes guns are very effective at killing. They need to be treated with respect and a modicum of fear. Today, we cannot eliminate firearms. We can limit access to them by those with mental problems and a history of criminal behavior. And I support those efforts. - FormerParatrooper - Tuesday, Jul 19, 16 @ 5:36 pm: One thing is for certain, these are not the actions of people who care about themselves or others. I do not know how we solve that issue, at least not in the current generation of those who are doing this. Maybe prison is the best course, at least keeps them off the street and stops them doing these things. Would it be cheaper to put them in prison or to keep paying to clean up the messes they are leaving? - Tom K. - Wednesday, Jul 20, 16 @ 7:02 am: If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it. We as a nation have been subsidizing poor choices for the past fifty years. What used to be stigmitized, is now culturally acceptable, if not admirable. Funny, but the guns that have been in my house for the past sixty years have never loaded themselves or shot anyone, nor have they ever been taken out of their cases in anger. This is a cultural problem. Personally, I would make the penalty for posession of a gun by someone not licensed to have one so severe, that people would be afraid to go near them. And jail would become a place to be feared by the average gangbanger, currently jails are boot camps that reward the violent and powerful held within them - just the opposite of what they should do. - Anonymous - Wednesday, Jul 20, 16 @ 7:24 am: The Chicago Expressways have been a hazard for years. Reckless driving, excessive speeding and more have existed for years. It is not surprising now, it’s become a shooting gallery. Over a decade ago, an agreement between the State & City, allowing lottery ticket sales at O’Hara’s Airport resulted in police patrols delegated to the State Police, resulting in year by year by year a decrease in State Police Patrols on Chicago’s Expressways. Down state it’s been known one State cop might service hundreds of square miles….an un realistic expectation. You can blame the lack of State Police presence as a gift card for the Chicago Expressway violence. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.