This is the editorial from the Chicago Tribune today. It is a conservative newspaper, certainly not anti gun owning. In fact it endorsed Bush for
president , despite the overwhelming majority of this city and state being democrat.
Nevertheless, it makes interesting reading. Any reactions? comments? I certainly have a few but I will refrain for now:
Cheers.
KT
++++++++++++++
Another 151 murders averted
Published December 31, 2004
The crushing of skulls on a gorgeous summer evening in 2002 awakened Chicago to a travesty this city long had tolerated. The deaths of two defenseless
men--they were beaten with masonry and fists by a mob of bystanders after their van struck three young women--shocked America. The vigilante
executions of Jack Moore, 62, and Anthony Stuckey, 49, accomplished something that more than 600 homicides a year, for 34 straight years, had not:
Those two murders embarrassed Chicago.
In a series of 2002 editorials, "The Chicago crime," this page framed the nonchalance of a metropolis to its ritual massacre:
"In a city that has improved by almost every measure--from infant mortality to public education, from calmer race relations to the broad
diversity of its economy--one civic failure stubbornly defies conquest. Not since 1967 has a year concluded with fewer than 600 people being murdered
here. . . . What none of us wants to say, but what we as a city say by our tolerance of 600 murders a year, is that many of these lives are
expendable. There is no empirical proof that Chicagoans ignore homicides by the hundreds because the blood flows in impoverished neighborhoods where
most of the faces are black or brown. But to deny that reality is to ignore what most of us will admit under our breath."
Year after year, fewer than 10 percent of Chicago's murder victims are white. That enduring calculus penalizes parts of Chicago by race, and
also by class. Reverse the percentages, making nine of every 10 victims white, and Chicago's civic outrage would have demanded decades ago that
the murder toll be slashed.
The fact that such a demand is being sounded now is a belated acknowledgement that in terrorized neighborhoods across this city, too many young bodies
wind up wearing toe tags.
- - -
Chicago's crusade since 2002 to drive down the carnage is making extraordinary progress. As of mid-Thursday, with barely a day of killing time
to go, the 2004 murder toll stood at 447. That is 151 fewer victims, 151 fewer heartbroken families, 151 fewer anguished funeral sermons, than the
2003 toll of 598 by the same date, Dec. 30.
When the final corpses were counted, Chicago ended 2003 with 600 homicides. That was down from 654 in 2002, which was down from 668 in 2001. In short,
while the number of homicides nationwide has been growing slightly, in Chicago it has starkly declined. So, too, has the all-important murder
rate--homicides divided by population--the humiliating category in which Chicago has led the nation's biggest cities in nine of the last 10 full
years.
Two more lifesaving achievements attest to this progress--which has been, in the parlance of logicians, necessary but not sufficient.
- For many years, through 2002, Chicago endured some 4,000 intentional shootings every year in addition to its murders. (Four of five killers here use
guns.) But in 2003, as this crusade against violence took hold, the number of intentional shootings in Chicago dropped by 23 percent, to 3,016. As of
Thursday, the count for 2004 had plummeted by another 39 percent, to 1,824.
- The number of guns seized this year by Chicago police has risen more than 5 percent to 10,479--an average of 29 firearms taken off the streets every
day. Just since Sept. 13, when Congress and the Bush administration inexplicably let the federal ban on assault weapons expire, police here have
seized more than 100 of those hyperefficient killing machines.
In sum, a city defined by gun violence since the bloodthirsty days of Capone is now experiencing . . . much less gun violence.
The overarching reason is that Chicago--its public officials, some of its victimized communities, its foundations and other institutional voices--has
come to see homicide as an issue of basic civil rights. For too long, law-abiding residents of impoverished minority neighborhoods have been hostages
to violence, deprived of the security and freedom the rest of us enjoy.
Mayor Richard M. Daley signaled an assault on the killing early in 2003. The slaughter angered Daley, formerly Cook County's chief prosecutor;
since he became mayor in 1989, more than 11,000 people have been murdered in his city. He hired federal prosecutor Matthew Crowl as his de facto
homicide czar. Later that year, Crowl had a role in Daley's choice of Philip Cline as police superintendent.
Credit for that inspired appointment also goes to Ald. Ike Carothers (29th), head of the City Council's Police and Fire Committee. Carothers was
disgusted by mayhem so ruthless that every two weeks on average, another schoolchild died of gunshot wounds. Carothers took a political risk, telling
Chicago's African-American community that crime-fighting ability--not the race of any candidate--mattered most in the choice of a top cop. In
the realpolitik of Chicago, Carothers' candor allowed Daley to promote Cline, who is white.
Cline is the architect of imaginative tactics to put more "cops on the dots," flooding officers into zones where violence has occurred or
where improved gang intelligence suggests it is likely. He has ordered desk officers and top brass onto vicious streets during the nighttime hours
when killings tend to occur. As never before, officers have disrupted open-air drug markets, gun trafficking and retaliatory cycles of gang
warfare.
Cline also has benefited from work by his predecessor, Terry Hillard, who is black. It was Hillard's outreach to minority communities, including
frequent forums he hosted, that left many neighborhoods open--however cautiously--to the heavier police presence Cline has delivered. Chicago cops
have increased their one-to-one contacts by tens of thousands, mostly in minority areas, with no increase in citizen complaints of misconduct by
officers. The fear often voiced in many neighborhoods is that the police will lose interest in quelling gunplay and retreat.
Chicago owes some of its improvement to federal prosecutors who have aggressively wielded gun laws, and to federal judges who treat these cases more
seriously than before. Experimental efforts to teach parolees about Draconian federal prison penalties for repeat firearms offenders has cut homicides
in those neighborhoods even more dramatically than the citywide reduction. Those tutorials also have prompted some suspects captured during gun
offenses to beg of the arresting officers: "Don't take me federal!"
- - -
Chicago is at a tipping point. For some potential killers, it appears, a gun is now too toxic a possession to be an everyday article of attire. The
halving of intentional shootings in just two years suggests that violent behaviors can be changed, even after decades of constancy. A balance of power
is shifting away from those who long have terrorized much of Chicago. Their influence must continue to diminish. The murder numbers here must continue
to fall.
Speaking to police commanders earlier this month, Cline bluntly instructed them not to confuse being pleased with being satisfied. On Tuesday he
reiterated: "We can't become complacent. We've had 445 homicides this year. Those victims' families are not rejoicing today
when they hear that we're down 145 homicides." Two more homicides have occurred since Cline spoke those words.
Chicago paid a terrible price for its one-third of a century with more than 600 murders every year: During that pogrom, more than 28,000 lives were
exterminated.
Homicide isn't one pathology, but a constellation of pathologies--from domestic violence to tavern brawls to gangbanging--that leave corpses.
Driving down homicide demands a strategy for each pathology. Example: In 2005, Chicago police will launch new efforts to curb infanticides.
The long-term solution to homicide is to better educate young people before they turn to dangerous lifestyles involving gangs, guns and drugs.
Until that effort can prevail, we're forced to evaluate Chicago's expanding crusade against homicide by the number of people still among
us. To give thanks, at the end of that crusade's third year, for another 151 murders that didn't occur.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
|
