Wednesday, August 31, 2016

ChicagoLand

In case you haven't noticed, Chicago is having a particularly horrific month.  It's the murder capitol of the US, with the tally at 78  murdered now for August (and that tally is liable to change before midnight).

Chicago, you might note, has the harshest gun regime in the US.  Normal people can't have guns in Chicago.  So, what's the problem?
Some call it "gun violence," a definition greatly appreciated by Democratic politicians like those at City Hall. They can point to guns and take that voter anger over homicide numbers and channel it into a safe space.
But there are plenty of guns in the suburbs, and suburbanites aren't slaughtering each other.
It's the gang wars.
 Everything I 'm hearing tells me that morale is low in the police department.  As a result, street stops are down and street stops are the best way to control violence.  The street gangs have sensed an opening and they are nothing if not opportunistic.

Yet, we don't hear anyone in the administration talking about the gang problem.  It's there, but they don't want to talk about it.  All they want to talk about is guns.  One thing that the administration has not learned is that we can either support the police, or we can support the street gangs.  That's pretty much your choice.  If you support the street gangs, be ready to pay the butcher's bill.

2 comments:

Judy said...

Could it be the administration has gang connections?

Old 1811 said...

"Normal people can't have guns in Chicago." That used to be true, but it ended in 2011, when Illinois became the fiftieth and last state to pass a concealed-carry law. The same law repealed Chicago's handgun ban (which was passed in 1983), and now Chicago has quite a few lawful concealed carriers, plus the lawfully carrying suburbanites who go to Chicago regularly.
The main engine driving the homicide rate is gang warfare over drugs. Judy is right; many of the politicians in Chicago have gang affiliations (but I wouldn't say "the administration" does). The Chicago PD used to have an authorized strength of 13,000; it is now down below 10,000, according to estimates (you can't get solid figures out of the city), and when the "55 and out" retirement option expires in January, the CPD expects to lose between 600 and 1,000 more. A new state law has made Terry stops so cumbersome and legally perilous that only an idiot would conduct any proactive policing. The Cook County court system undercharges and undersentences, and the prison system won't keep prisoners in prison. The two brothers who were just arrested for murdering the basketball player's cousin were both out on parole for violent felonies. It's sort of a perfect storm.
And blaming the Democrats is fun (and probably accurate), but the last Republican mayor of Chicago, Big Bill Thompson, was the guy who opened up Chicago to Al Capone.