by Voice of Chicago, resident of Chicago
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
Chicago has screwed up priorities. It wasn’t fated that Chicago have a high and rising homicide rate. Chicago made choices. We could focus more on the body count and the emptying Black neighborhoods, and yet the hot topic in town is about renaming Lake Shore Drive, perhaps Chicago’s best known and least offensive street name, to honor Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable. I have nothing against Du Sable, a Black man of Haitian and mixed French Canadian descent believed to be Chicago’s first non-native permanent resident. It’s just ironic to honor Chicago’s first Black resident at the same time Black residents are fleeing Chicago in record numbers.
The Flight of Black Chicago
The past decade Chicago’s Black population has dropped by 100,000, to 788,000. Chicago has lost more than one-third of its Black population since 1980. Many working- and middle-class Blacks have simply voted with their feet and moved. We’re witnessing the Great Migration in reverse.
Chicago progressives talk of a declining Black population in terms of rising rents and gentrification. But rising rents and gentrification aren’t problems typically associated with the neighborhoods where the living population flees while ambulances transport the dead and wounded out. Outside perhaps of North Woodlawn (adjacent to Hyde Park and the University of Chicago), I challenge anyone to find a Black Chicago neighborhood where gentrification is the driving force behind Black flight. And even Woodlawn still has vacant lots.
If in one year 5% of a local minority population in another country fled in part because of fear of violence, we’d call it a pogrom, or at least a Civil Rights issue.
In 2016, the US Census Bureau estimated that Chicago’s Black population declined by 40,000 people. That’s a five percent decline in just one year. That same year saw a dramatic increase in the number of Black Chicagoans shot and killed. Contrary to elite opinion, that wasn’t a coincidence. It’s a slow version of ethnic cleansing and the twisted beauty is there are no war crimes trials, and those being forced out are renting the U-Hauls and driving the trucks themselves. If in one year 5% of a local minority population in another country fled in part because of fear of violence, we’d call it a pogrom, or at least a Civil Rights issue.
Now I’m a lifelong Chicagoan and cynical individual. If I were to design a program to reduce the Black population in Chicago, I’d do exactly what white progressives are doing today: I’d argue for reducing jail populations; I’d limit cops stopping suspected criminals on the street; I’d reduce or eliminate bail requirements and release violent and/or serial criminals and I’d do this all in other people’s neighborhoods. Then I’d deflect blame from myself by using my failures to highlight the evils of systemic racism.
Yes, there are systemic and racist causes for long-standing racial disparities in violence, wealth, and pretty much everything else in Chicago and America. However, historic Redlining or 1619 or Jon Burge doesn’t explain the rise in murders in 2020.
Where are the leaders of today who will stand up to mindless rhetoric and say good intentions with bad results aren’t good enough?
The Failure of “Reform”
As I write this on the morning or December 17th, 2020, 759 people have been murdered in the City of Big Shoulders.* Those who downplay the body count love to compare violence to the worst years, as if they believe massive violence is somehow the natural state of affairs for some people. Yes, 939 people were murdered in 1992, but so what? Most murderers today weren’t alive in 1992. Since 2000, Chicago’s yearly homicide total has averaged 525. Tragic, yes. But better than 2020. We need to strive for the better years.
Each time a number goes up a human life is lost, family and friends grieve, neighborhoods suffer, and whole sections of the city empty out as people move from trauma to what they hope will be safer environments.
Just last year, 2019, saw fewer than 500 homicides.
The last big increase in homicides occurred in 2015 and 2016 after Laquan McDonald was wrongfully killed by a cop. A court ordered the release of the October 2014 video on November 24, 2015, but only after a successful effort by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to keep the video under wraps during his 2015 re-election campaign.
Subsequent protests and changes helped lead to a shift in policing and a dramatic drop in police stopping and questioning people. The City of Chicago and the American Civil Liberties Union reached an agreement that new police reports would have to be filed each time a cop legally stopped and talked to someone. These reports, which were later shortened, could take up to 30 minutes to fill out correctly and completely.
Cops also noted that the ACLU had unique legal access to the forms and a propensity to sue police officers. Police street stops dropped 82% almost overnight.
Police stops in Chicago are down to levels not seen since, well, before there was anything resembling semi-reliable statistics. In the social justice set, these declines are celebrated and lauded by NPR and the Chicago Tribune.
Homicides went up from 473 in 2015 to 746 in 2016. Interestingly, as street stops declined, traffic stops doubled in 2016 and increased seven-fold by 2019. Perhaps police officers don’t want the hassle and potential lawsuits from stopping real criminals, so they started stopping more cars. But that hasn’t stopped carjackers who choose not to stop. Car jackings have doubled ever since police were told not to pursue carjackers. Somebody could be hurt.
Yes, police stops are disproportionate in terms of race, gender, age and other factors. So is crime and violence. We don’t need the ACLU to tell us that police stops in Chicago are racially disproportionate compared to the general population. Police are supposed to stop criminals. The 75-year-old granny with the grocery cart is not going to elicit the same interest from cops as say a 16-year-old throwing gang signs on a corner. Perhaps if the 16-year-old is going to be hassled, granny should be hassled too. Then again at least the cops might help her get her groceries home.
Now we’re in 2020, and homicides are the highest since 1996. This despite a drop in the city’s absolute population and a dramatic drop in the Black population. It’s worth mentioning the dramatic improvements in emergency medical response. Some public health experts believe better medical care has cut the nationwide homicide rate by 15%. The same number of people might get shot, but fewer people will die.
Failure Leads to Flight
There is currently a nine-year life expectancy gap in Chicago between Blacks and whites. Two of these nine years are the direct result of the racial disparity in getting murdered. (And this based on “better” homicide numbers from the early 2000s.) This is a larger difference than from the racial disparities in infant mortality (which account for approximately 8.4 months difference in life expectancy).
If Black infant mortality in the City of Chicago jumped 60% in one year the heavens would shake from protests and demands for change. A twice-as-likely to die from COVID disparity has deservedly gotten repeated attention. Yet, with a 60% spike in homicides and with Black Chicagoans being 15 times more likely than white Chicagoans to be murdered we hear only crickets. Regardless of the overall homicide numbers, every year approximately 80% of the homicide victims are Black compared to about 5% of victims being non-Hispanic whites.
Eight Black neighborhoods have seen their population drop by more than half since 1980.
Our depolicing movement is led largely by white progressives who, a generation ago, would have been called “Lakefront Liberals.” Like their predecessors, these progressive aldermen (yes, even the alderwomen are called aldermen in Chicago) generally live nowhere near high-crime blocks. And with their new superficial understanding of critical race theory, they bloviate on what is best for wards they’re too scared to drive through, much less understand.
In 1980 72% of Illinois’ Black population was in Chicago. Now it’s 44%. A good portion of this decline can be attributed to the allure of the suburbs. However, it’s not only the glory of the attached garage as much as desire for safety that has driven the massive increase in Black movement out of Chicago.
From 2000-2010 Black student enrollment in Chicago Public Schools declined from 226,000 to 171,000. From 2010 to 2020 Black student enrollment in Chicago Public Schools declined another 49,000, to 122,000. In other words, half of the loss in Chicago’s Black population this decade came from a decline in school-age children in Chicago Public Schools. Presumably, much of the other half came from their parents. Parents who hear gunshots decide to leave Chicago entirely for what they hope will be a safer environment for their children. Black families have voted with their feet and their moving trucks.
Meanwhile, entire city neighborhoods empty out as schools, social services, and businesses close because there are fewer people to utilize those services. Eight largely Black neighborhoods — Englewood, West Englewood, Grand Boulevard, Washington Park, West Garfield Park, Douglas, Oakland, Fuller Park — have seen their population drop by more than half since 1980.
Meanwhile Mayor Lori Lightfoot lives protected in “Fort Lori.” State’s Attorney Kim Foxx blames the spike in murders, in part, on a lack of fresh vegetables. Have they no shame? Where are the leaders of today who will stand up to mindless rhetoric and say good intentions with bad results aren’t good enough?
Half of the decade’s Black population loss came from school-age children in Chicago Public Schools
The Solution
The problem today is gun violence. More deterrence and fair punishment will lower crime rates. We need police to police and prosecutors to prosecute the criminals who shoot people. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement. In Chicago we’ve created an environment where the people who carry illegal guns feel like there’s little chance of being stopped by cops. If they’re arrested, there’s little chance of meaningful punishment.
When criminals fear being stopped, they’ll carry fewer weapons. Fewer weapons equals fewer shootings when some rival appears or an argument happens. Lower crime rates could, if handled correctly, lead to fewer people in prison. In the short term stopping and arresting gun toting criminals should increase the ranks of the incarcerated. In the medium-term, with less violence, inmate population would go down.
If a convicted felon believes there’s a reasonable likelihood of being stopped by cops he’ll be a whole lot less likely to carry a gun if he knows he’ll end up spending some months or years locked up. Academics call this “deterrence.” Amateurs like me call this “common sense.” In the end, if the result is less violence, what we call it is irrelevant.
Stops and arrests can’t be the only tools necessary to reduce crime. A robust and effective prosecutorial and judicial system that actually punishes offenders is a basic requirement for safer communities. If “punishment” is too harsh a word let’s call it “providing negative reinforcements against socially disruptive behavior”. Now that’s a sociological turn of phrase that essentially means “more certainty of jail or prison sentences.” Generally speaking the length of the sentences are less important than the certainty of the sentence.
That means having cops who work specific beats, who know who the criminal players are, and stop them frequently. Legally, but frequently. Is this unfair to those who are stopped? Perhaps. But not doing so is unfair to innocent victims and those who have to leave Chicago in fear.
The problem with any “get tough” approach is cops, like all other humans, screw up on occasion. For that matter, so does every part of the criminal justice system. Honest and dishonest mistakes in police and prosecutions remain problems. Cops and prosecutors who purposefully go rogue need to be held accountable. However, legitimate prosecution and punishment of criminals is not some error or mistake. It is not in-and-of-itself a social evil. It’s a social necessity. Show me a society where serious criminality isn’t punished, and I’ll show you a society where as Thomas Hobbes might say life is “nasty, brutish and short.”
Saint Augustine defined evil as the absence of good or the loss of good. Yes, I’m the product of Chicago Catholic schools. I doubt the rise in Chicago’s homicide numbers is because of the presence of more evil, but I’m certain about the lack of good policy.
The Roman poet who coined “bread and circuses” would be proud. The more crime rises in the Black community, the more people flee those neighborhoods, and the more Chicago Aldermen generate public approval by diversion and distraction. “Sure,” they can say, “over 3,200 Black Chicagoans have been shot this year and over 600 murdered, but we renamed Lake Shore Drive!”
The fault dear Chicagoans, is in ourselves.
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Voice of Chicago is a lifelong Chicagoan who was born just off the Dan Ryan Expressway and later moved to the North Side. He feels that the city where the skyscraper was created and perfected can and will do better. Voice of Chicago believes, contrary to the honorable Richard J. Daley, that the police aren’t there to create or preserve disorder; they’re there to disrupt disorder.
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*Editor’s note: Population figures have been updated to reflect 2020 Census data.
