Gangs, Racism and Homicide in Chicago

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 responsiblefor 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.

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.  

The Amazing Transformation of William “Sonny” Fletcher

By John M. Hagedorn

Outta all the stuff I been through, I been shot and everything, left for dead and all this, it’s time for me to give something back and I’m doing it and I feel good about it.

Redemption. From the streets to the prisons and back to the streets. But now he isn’t robbing people — he’s helping them.

Born in 1957, his family was one of the first black families to move to Lawndale in 1960.  They owned the “Thirteen Ten Club” on Kedzie. As he grew up he watched the Vice Lords as they transformed from a street gang into a group that helped the community. He explains how the Vice Lords worked back then:

William "Sonny" Fletcher

…say that they snatched somebody’s purse …if Mrs. Johnson came up on the corner and told one of the guys “I know who did it my purse got snatched” call the police?  We’ll go get him and we’ll come up with the purse and mostly all the belongings maybe a little money be gone ‘cause drugs wasn’t that bad back then and we would deal with ‘em, you know what I’m sayin?  We’ll rough him up, where they know not to do it no more…  I mean Vice Lords did a lot, they paid some peoples rent…  They had buildings where people could stay in…..if you needed help they would help.

But Mayor Daley and his cops came down hard on the Vice Lords, cutting off funds for their programs and jailing Bobby Gore and other leaders.

…here’s a group of Black guys that trying to get together on something positive and you wanna destroy it, instead of saying “hey they doing something pretty good over there lets go over and talk to these guys and see what they doing? 

Sonny joined the Renegade Vice Lords and became a terror on the streets. He went to prison for the first time at 17:

Altogether I was incarcerated nine times.  I was just looking at it the other day and it was about 29 years altogether off and on.

He was a bright kid who fell under the lure of dope but gained a reputation in the prisons as someone to talk to, who would help with the law and getting along in prison. Then when he was released in 1981 he met Bobby Gore who was working at the Safer Foundation. He said he was Bobby’s “first success story.” Bobby told him:

“what are you doing here?” (I said)  I just come home man- Im trying to do something.  So he said  “look- don’t bullshit me, you want a job, you got a high school diploma.”    I said yeah I been going to college in the joint.  He said  “I can get you a job today.”

Sonny got that job at a gas station and within a month he was the manager. Today he works at St. Leonard’s, counseling younger men released from prison, leading them on a path away from crime. He has some strong, but simple advice:

But the young guys, they see me.  I’m talking ‘bout, they used to call me Mr. Buzzard.  I was a rough cat, anything goes.  Now I’m a substance abuse counselor.  When they say to me “Man, you don’t even come around no more, you don’t do this.”  I say “I come around.  When now when I come around.. you’ll say “what a transformation. No more robbing, no more dope.”  They ask me for money, but I’m not giving you any money to go out and kill yourself, I’m sorry.  “But you used to.”  I say “yes, think what you’re saying, I used to do a lot of things, I don’t do that anymore.”  And I try to explain to ‘em that doing what they doin’ now is easy.  Doing the right thing is hard.

You can still find William Fletcher at 16^th & Lawndale. But now he isn’t robbing people but collecting food donations and sponsoring free meals. He’s organizing programs for summer jobs.  His plans include a social center in an abandoned building in the center of the “Holy City.”  He has found redemption in serving his community.   He’s doing the right thing and it ain’t hard no more.

Chiraq ain't Chicago

Spike Lee's new movie is NOT about Chicago.  'Chiraq' is a metaphor for senseless violence and the desperation of the public to stop it.  Chiraq is also Hollywood entertainment and if success is measured in dollars, it's a likely loser.

Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, the model for this movie, as one of a series of plays about the futility of the Peloponnesian wars.  Those wars devastated and exhausted Athens and Sparta between 431-404 BC.   Lee's comparison of the war-weary Athenian public to inner city African Americans works on a general level.

The message of both Aristophanes and Lee is the same: most wars are about power and masculine pride.  The true cost of such wars are measured in the lives of innocents. These wars can get out of control and the movie is a plea for peace. 

Okay, I buy that. And I liked the idea that a mass movement — in this case of women — is the way to force the warriors to put down their arms. This is also my argument in The In$ane Chicago Way, A World of Gangs, and People & Folks, my books on gangs. 

But there are many problems in the movie that alienated me.  First, as with Aristophanes, the characters in Chiraq are reduced to stereotypes, even cartoons. The gang leaders, for example, have no depth and seem only concerned with sex until Chiraq (the gang leader) is overwhelmed at the end of the movie with images of victims and repents.  The women are nearly all one-dimensional as well,  crude stereotypes of sex-obsessed black women wearing alluring attire. Such shallowness may have been all right in the Athenian theater, but we should expect more in a two-hour movie. What the shorthand of this movie does is reinforce racial stereotypes, not undermine them. 

Second, Lee's location of the movie prompts us to look for insights into Chicago's gangland. Don't. In the very first scenes of the movie,  comparing the deaths in Chicago in 2000-2015 to those in Iraq and Afghanistan, the movie veers away from reality.  The years since 2004 have marked the lowest level of homicide in Chicago since 1967. The violent years — the organized gang wars — were in the years 1989-1999 when Chicago's homicide rate was twice as high as now. Lee's nostalgic references to "back in the day when children weren't shot" forget the gang ordered murder of 11-year-old Yummy Sandifer in 1994, who was featured on the cover of Time and memorialized by Tupac.  We forget how much worse violence was during the gang wars. Once again, Lee reinforces media stereotypes. 

The climax of the movie is the signing of a peace treaty between gang leaders and with the mayor and police chief.  That's not happening today, even if women withhold sex.  There are no Chicago African American gang leaders anymore with the authority to negotiate any broader truce.  Young people don't know their laws and prayers but instead memorize sexist and violent "drill-style rap" lyrics. Today's gang-bangers are not directed from above, but are stimulated to violence by local incidents,  neighborhood feuds, episodic humiliations, petty drug deals, and social media provocations.  An early scene in the movie where a rapper is shot in a concert with provocative rap lyrics tweeted in text on the screen is intended to recall the 2012 Chief Keefe and Li'l Jo Jo beef.  But gang homicide today has dropped dramatically from the 1990s,  not getting worse as Chiraq would have us believe.

The hard reality masked by Lee's stereotypes is that no gang leaders or magic bullets can stop the kind of spontaneous gang violence we are witnessing today. The gang peace conference in 1999 described in In$ane ended in the assassination of a gang leader by his own gang homies as he tried to negotiate peace. The futile tactics of the Chicago Police and CureViolence to threaten or cajole gang leaders don't work because gang leaders aren't in control of any armies.  Rep. Bobby Rush's trip to the federal prison in Florence, Colorado  to meet with Jeff Fort and Larry Hoover was 20 years too late and out of touch with reality. The 1990s gang wars ended for many reasons spelled out in my book. But the principle outcome was the undermining of established gang leaders and fracturing of African American gangs. 

Don't forget I said Lee's movie was NOT about Chicago. But that made one aspect of the movie maddening. One of the lead characters in Chiraq,  who contextualizes the violence and leads the protest march is a white priest played by John Cusack.  He is supposed to represent the real-life Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabinas parish. In a Spike Lee movie, bewilderingly, a white person is the moral leader.  There are many views of Pfleger, but why are there no serious African American community leaders in the movie who talk to gang youth and work for peace?  Why didn't Spike Lee feature Minister Farrakhan or the active NOI gang outreach of Minister Michael D Muhammed?  If the movie is only loosely tied to present day Chicago, why feature a white priest?

I think this is the Hollywood angle of the movie. Chiraq seeks to be a cross-over and such movies need white heroes. I'm not sure it's going to work. My wife and I went to the movie at prime time in an upscale theater near our home.  There were only about two dozen people in the audience and we were the only whites.  What message did placing a white priest as the voice of reason and empathy send?  In Chicago's ghetto,  as well as in other cities,  it is African American community leaders who do the lion's share of the work for peace.   Shame on you, Spike Lee.

I was also unsatisfied with the film's minimizing of the impact of police violence. The movie invoked BlackLivesMatter with a familiar list of names of victims.  The idea that police violence, like the horrific police execution of Laquan McDonald,  has played a major role in stoking the hostility of black youth is totally absent.  As I said in the last line of In$ane, "In Chicago and elsewhere, history shows the gang problem is broader than just a problem of gang members."   This movie lets the cops off the hook.

Spike Lee's movie is about stereotypes. Unfortunately, instead of undermining them, he promotes them.