The Mayor’s Task Force has said the obvious: Racism is at the heart of the problems with Chicago Police Department. Consider CPD history.
Chicago Police looked the other way when racist gangs attacked the
black community during the 1919 race riots. They enforced the “era of hidden
violence’ from the 1920s to the end of the 1940s, when whites attacked any
black family daring to move across segregated lines. They were paid off by the
Outfit, Chicago’s mafia, in protecting Outfit gambling and vice businesses, but
cracked down on black and Latino small scale hustling. CPD officers pretended
they did not hear when Jon Burge physically tortured, in CPD stations, more
than a hundred black gang members. The code of silence meant violence against
African Americans, including police murder, has been business as usual for
decades.
In recent years the excuse for police violence has been the need to
combat gangs. Gang violence, in the mind
of much of the public, justifies brutal and illegal police tactics. After all,
doesn’t everyone agree that gangs are behind Chicago’s high homicide rate?
I don’t. I’ve studied gangs and homicide in Chicago for the past 20
years. While gang members certainly account for more than their share of
homicides, we might consider some discrepant information.
To start off with there are at least as many Latino gang members in
Chicago as African American gangsters. Yet three quarters of all homicide
victims and offenders are black, and have been for decades. Hmm. We
have Latino and Black gangs. Much higher rates among Black
gangs? Maybe being Black has something to do with it?
A recent UIC
Great Cities Study reports nearly half of young black men in Chicago are
unemployed. Homicide worldwide, the UN Study on Global Homicide tells us,
is related to the desperation of unemployed young men. Conditions in
Chicago’s African American communities qualify as desperation in my book. A war
on gangs? Why not a war on unemployment or poverty?
Similarly claims by DEA’s Jack Riley that Chicago homicides are
related to the Mexican cartels defies logic. If homicide is mainly about drug
trafficking, why are are there so few homicides of Mexicans compared to African
Americans? Some say the six Mexican family members killed in February in
Gage Park was a cartel hit. Maybe, but regardless the vast majority of
all homicides remain between very poor African Americans.
Today there are no citywide wars over drug turf as the organized
gangs wars of the 1990s. The violence of that decade contributed to the
shattering of Chicago’s African American “super-gangs.” Black
gang drug dealing today is small scale and local and that means deadly
disputes have largely stayed local. Despite scary violent drill rap
videos, the number of homicides today is at half the level of the carnage of
the 1990s.
If gangs are the root of the homicide problem, why does Los Angeles,
with as many gangs as Chicago, have a homicide rate of 7.3/100,000 while Chicago’s is
at 17.2? Maybe the hopelessness of African Americans in the rustbelt has something
to do with it? Chicago’s homicide rate is similar to other rustbelt
cities, like Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Cleveland or Memphis who are all between 20
and 25. While Chicago’s homicide rate is four times higher than
New York City’s 3.9, thankfully, it has not risen to Detroit’s level of 44 or
St. Louis’ 50.
Homicide in Chicago has been relatively steady since 2004 when the
city wide gang wars ended. This year’s jump in the first three months is
similar to jumps in 2008 and 2012 which saw small spikes that fell the next year.
The 135 total homicides in the first three months of this year are slightly
more than the 114 in 2012 but far below the 200 in the first three months of
1991. While homicide this year is likely to level off, the main point is Chicago’
homicide rates is steady and not falling.
Is there a “Ferguson effect?” The
Sentencing
Project doesn’t think so. The jump in St Louis homicides occurred before Michael Brown’s killing by police. While the CPD claims the new policies of
reducing Chicago’s stops of African Americans is responsible for Chicago’s 2016 uptick in homicide, it is more likely that the CPD’s behavior having "no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color" in the words of the Mayor’s Task Force has been a major factor contributing to the hostility of young black men over the years. For example, the CPD’s 250,000 stops of citizens in 2014 “dwarfs” the rate of stops by the New York Police Department in their highest years.
A large percentage of Chicago’s homicides appear to be related in
some way or another to African American gang or clique members. However, in my opinion, gangs today are more
effect than cause of high homicide rates. I concur with the Mayor’s Task Force who
argues:
We
arrived at this point in part because of racism.
We arrived at this point because of a mentality in CPD that the ends justify the means.
We arrived at this point because of a failure to make accountability a core value and imperative within CPD.
We arrived at this point because of a significant underinvestment in human capital.
We arrived at this point because of a mentality in CPD that the ends justify the means.
We arrived at this point because of a failure to make accountability a core value and imperative within CPD.
We arrived at this point because of a significant underinvestment in human capital.
I’ve stated in this blog previously
that the CPD bear a large degree of responsibility for our city’s entrenched
gang problem. Gangs make good headlines
and scapegoats but Chicago has to take a hard look in the mirror at the
desperate conditions facing black youth and the CPD’s responsibility for a
culture of alienation and hostility.
There are no easy answers to reducing Chicago’s homicide rate. Police
officers must follow the law and the blue code needs to be undermined. Radical
changes in police culture must accompany investment in black communities,
better and more stable housing and education, reductions in prison population,
and more jobs. The Task Force points out we have reached this crisis in policing
because of racism. We have to also recognize the uncomfortable reality that our
homicide rate is also more about race than gangs.