Murder
Sun Times tells us Chicago's rate is flat compared to 2004. Looks like that still leaves us one of the highest in the US based on analysis of last year's rate and probably higher than Iraq's based on this blogger's analysis from last year.
The Trib used to run a series at the start of the year with a photo of each child murdered in Chicago and a little description how they died.
I heard LeRoy Martin years ago when still Chief on a TV talk show say Chicago had a pretty decent standard of living if we just stopped killing each other.
It's really our greatest social ill and public health disaster and doesn't look like it's going to be talked about much this year.
So here's a link to a site where you can google map Chicago's crimes, day-by-day, street-by-street. Something for seniors hunkered down in their apartments or kids kept at home by fearful parents to pass the time.
Cross posted at Bill Baar's West Side.
8 comments:
Some of these alderman are causes of the crime
HDO are bringing more crime too
Comparing murder rates of Iraq vs "insert American city I don't like here" is right wing tripe of the worst kind.
First, it is more than a little disengenuous to compare one crowded American city to an entire country comprised of cities and vast rural areas.
Second, do you really think EVERY murder in Iraq gets reported?
Third, is political violence counted as murder? Not likely.
Or, put another way...you are charged with driving the streets of either Chicago or Baghdad from dusk until dawn. No police escort. No armor (hey - just like US troops!). Small arms ok.
Which city do you choose. If you say Baghdad - you're a liar. Or a fool.
Well anonymous, I have an applications with the DoD for any of them.
Write Hastert and tell him to select me, as I got royally bent out of shape when the guy the Army passed me over for as contracting officer in the southern Basra region was indicted on some contract foolishness.
Anyways, a friend of mine back in 1967 thought it was a good idea to volunteer instead of waiting for the draft, and volunteered to be a paratrooper because he wanted to be with professionals.
He told me when he got back from Vietnam it was a really bad idea.
He also said most of the guys he trained with had already been shot or stabbed before they even made it into the Army and Vietnam. It was a tough country in 1967.
It still is. Write DoD and ask how many troops carry a diagnosis of PTSD before joining the service. I suspect you'll be startled by the numbers.
Violence scars America. It's politicized as a right wing or left wing issue and that's nuts because it devastates our cities, kills our kids, and we can't begin to solve it if we don't talk about it upfront and openly.
Instead we just ignore it.
It is no secret that Iraq vs [Detroit, DC, Chicago, etc.] is a common argument of the right -- and particularly of the non-sporting gun lobby.
America is a violent country. And poor, crowded, urban America is right at the center of it.
And while one murder is too many, one ought not discount that the 2004 pace Chicago is keeping up with in 2005 is a decades-old low. So while we can't look at 500 murders and say "we're done," neither can we discount progress we've made.
And by the by, the twin attempts to justify Iraq and bash gun-control used in the Iraq vs US City argument IS politicizing the murder rate.
I'm worried about the discount of the progress. I was disappointment the Trib didn't cover it this year.
Sure it's politicizing. But why should it be an argument of the right? Why isn't Blagojevich or Esiendrath or Daley saying these are some things we did right, and we maybe should be doing more of it?
I went to work in Europe for the Army at the height of the terror attacks in the early 80's. I was at Ramstain Air Base the day a car bomb went off at NATO Air Force HQ.
But the only place I've ever seen any shot and killed was back home in Berwyn. The only place I've saw anyone stabbed was the loop. The only place I ever thought anyone might shoot me was the State Lake El Stop (not to mention missing the bullet in Berwyn).
I really don't worry about NSA spying or street camera surviallance. Now that I have kids in the city, I want those cameras all over.
I agree that electeds should be talking about it more. For what it is worth, I think it took brass ones to pull cops out of high price areas and reassign them to higher crime areas.
This was one of the reelection platforms of Ike Carothers - who certainly takes flak from the left and the right.
I'll say it again - improving shouldn't be an end - only a means.
I think the so-called big brother state is a subject that can be debated (I personally have no qualms with cameras and some other means). I do get a chuckle when some 2nd Amendment types are willing to give a little on cameras, but not on holding gun purchase records (NIMBY politics at its finest - and for the record, I am NOT an anti-gun zealot by any stretch, but sometimes the politics of it all baffles me).
It sounds as if we agree on more than was initially obvious. That said I still think that any anti-crime efforts on the law-and-order side that isn't matched on the social side is kind of futile.
Crumbling schools breed poverty. Poverty breeds poverty. Poverty breeds crime.
You don't have to be a fuzzy-headed academic to figure that.
The war on poverty hasn't ended poverty. How can it end crime?
OJ; Robert Blake; Ken Lay ( accused serial thief)& Lord Black; Michael Milliken; The Bros. Menedez; John Hinckley; the Minnesota Vikings;Michael Skakel and so many other criminals were not impoverished. A waste is a terrible thing to mind - these abberrant life forms had the family jewels but lacked the basic social ethic that keeps most people from killing and stealing from one another. It might be that these persons felt comfortable dodging the Laws.
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