And on Monday, August 6, at least 10 people were shot in eight incidents in the city.
Gun violence in Chicago is random the way destructive wind gusts are random. You can brace yourself but still not anticipate the location or severity of a blast. Monday August 6 easily could have been the quiet after the storm. One knows of no connection between a man killed at bus stop on Monday and a 17-year-old girl killed at block party the previous day, except that both were homicide victims in a city awash in illegal guns, and tormented by gang activity and the drug trade.
But why Chicago? Back in the early 1990s, the homicide rate in Chicago was as ugly as it was in New York and Los Angeles. Then began a steady national decline, Chicago included - until the abrupt recent upswing in violence.
In 2015, there were 485 homicides in Chicago. A year later, the number of victims skyrocketed to 764. That was 58% more homicides and 43% more nonfatal shootings in 2016. Since then, the pace of gun violence has dropped, but it remains elevated from what used to be considered normal, and is far worse than in America’s two biggest cities.
There can’t be a rational explanation because Chicago’s plague of urban warfare isn’t logical; it’s horrifically cruel and self-destructive. A 2017 University of Chicago Crime Lab study was able to quantify how much of the city’s gunfire victimises residents of struggling neighbourhoods: Five South and West side communities with 9% of Chicago’s population (Austin, Englewood, New City, West Englewood and Greater Grand Crossing) accounted for nearly half the city’s increase in 2016 homicides. African-American men ages 15-34 made up more than half of the city’s homicide victims in 2015 and 2016 while accounting for just 4% of the city’s population. Almost 40% of victims had prior violent crime arrests.
“One of the ways Chicago is different is that our social conditions are not anything like those now in New York City and Los Angeles,” Jens Ludwig, director of the Crime Lab, told a City Club audience early this year. “The level of concentrated poverty we have in our neighbourhoods is unlike anything in Los Angeles or New York.”
The dynamics at play, the ones Chicagoans want to understand to end the bloodshed, are complex. Gang life is a substitute for hope in isolated neighbourhoods. Every shooting invites a retaliatory attack. In a city of 2.7 million people, a relatively small number of criminals - perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 thugs and drug dealers - are driving a large share of the violence.
One positive development is this year’s 20% decline in the number of homicides and shooting incidents. But so much more has to be done to stop the shooting, punish offenders and save neighbourhoods. – Tribune News Service