The tragic number is 508. That is the number of homicides that took place in Chicago during 2008; short of our 1997 record, but 14 percent higher than last year.
The tragic number is 508.
That is the number of homicides that took place in Chicago during 2008; short of our 1997 record but 14 percent higher than last year.
Too many of those deaths involved young, Black males, and too many of them took place in neighborhoods full of Black children, Black mothers and fathers, and Black businesses and schools.
It is an escalation without reason and seemingly without solution. We are killing ourselves and killing our future, and, worse yet, we are breeding a culture that looks at the carnage and says it is OK.
It is especially troubling that this escalation of murder is taking place in Chicago when Mayor Richard M. Daley has gone out and brought in a new top cop, police Superintendent Jody Weis, promising a new day in Chicago policing. Weis, who has never been a beat cop, reassigned police brass, restructured the department and drew the line on police corruption.
Certainly, Weis’ job performance has to be graded on a number of factors, including his ability to lead, his ability to plan and his ability to communicate his message. He inherited a police department that was out of control, with officers on videotape beating private citizens and then other officers boldly defying their supervisors by supporting the perps in blue. It was a department not far removed from the Burge debacle, and even Weis’ best public relations cannot disguise the ugly number of police-involved shootings of minorities.
But the bottom line is do Chicago residents feel safer with Weis than they did before he arrived? A 14 percent increase in murders would call for an answer in the negative. Weis has had some notable failures, including his misjudgment regarding the Taste of Chicago, where four separate shootings claimed a life.
Weis, a former FBI special agent, is still learning how to police Chicago, but his learning curve will have to increase dramatically. Chicago cannot afford for the murder rate to continue to increase, scaring law-abiding citizens into the shelter of their homes and chasing would-be residents to seemingly safer suburbs.
And we have to be part of the solution as well. Weis will only be able to do so much. We cannot be enablers of this kind of deadly behavior.
We cannot look the other way, or countenance violent behavior in our families, in our neighborhoods, and act like it is someone else’s problem.
But Weis was brought in to bring about change. So far, we have had negative change, so he has to do better. His job is riding on it, and we have to communicate to Mayor Daley that his is as well.
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