Chicago & Policing (new title)

[AdamG]

Hooray for Daley!

Murders in the city peaked first in 1974, with 970 murders when the city's population was over three million, resulting in a murder rate of around 29 per 100,000, and again in 1992, with 943 murders when the city had fewer than three million people, resulting in a murder rate of 34 per 100,000.

Following 1992, the murder count slowly decreased to 705 by 1999. In 2002, Chicago had fewer number of murders but a significantly higher murder rate than New York or Los Angeles, a situation which city police attributed to entrenched gang violence.

http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webpor...ORIAL/04AR.pdf

And for 2006? Still coming at Highest Urban Murder Rate in the US, numba one wit' a bullet!
In Chicago, homicides through the first 11 months of the year were up 3.3 percent compared with the same period in 2005, reversing a four-year decline. A police spokeswoman said gang violence has been a contributing factor. (qu'elle surprise. Who we gonna take da gunz away frum, again?)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n2304130.shtml

PS: Daley was elected mayor April 4, 1989, to complete the term of the late Harold Washington. He was re-elected in 1991, 1995 and 1999 by overwhelming margins.

[Jedburgh]

The Economist, 17 May 08: The Mystery of Violence

....Chicago's muddled response frustrates David Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He notes that in the 1990s Boston brought together federal, state and local agencies, community groups, religious leaders and others (including himself) to fight violence. A main feature of the scheme was to locate gang members and tell them that help and services were available, but that violence would be met with severe penalties. If someone was killed, not only would prosecutors pursue the killer, but police would nail other gang members for smaller crimes. This would create an economic disincentive to kill—shooting a rival would badly disrupt gang business. The programme was launched in 1996. Youth murders plummeted. Long-term studies show a two-thirds drop.

Chicago has its own version of this strategy in six police districts, but it has been all but ignored in the current cacophony. A federal initiative called Project Safe Neighbourhoods (PSN) pays for the programme; the federal district attorney directs it. Chicago's PSN includes tough gun policing, federal prosecutions and—most important, or so researchers found—meetings with former felons to deter them from returning to crime. Over PSN's first two years, the districts it targeted saw a 37% drop in quarterly homicide rates. The challenge now is to help PSN expand. Chicago's leaders must use many tools to fight violence. One is right under their noses.