Last Updated: 10:59 PM, July 10, 2012
Posted: July 11, 2012
Chicago sure isn’t the Second City when it comes to street shootings;
Dodge City is more like it.
Certainly the outburst of handgun homicides that has plagued Chicago in recent weeks puts New York’s recent surge in perspective.
Thus far, Chicago has seen 275 murders in 2012
— up 38 percent over the same period last year.
That’s 22 percent more murders than New York has experienced this year — and keep in mind that Chicago is one-third the size of Gotham.
Direct comparisons are always tricky, of course. But when it comes to causality, it’s no secret that aggressive policing can make a huge difference.
A nd Chicago’s approach is decidedly more laid-back than New York’s.
It doesn’t use stop-and-frisk to counter its gang-fueled violence — but it does publicly plead with its criminals to move their crimes someplace else, so no one besides the intended victim gets hurt.
Really.
“[If] we’ve got two gangbangers, one standing next to a kid, get away from that kid,”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel told CBS News.
“Take your stuff away to the alley. Don’t touch the children of the city of Chicago. Don’t get near them.”
This is what passes for crime-fighting in the Windy City?
Well, yes. That and demolishing vacant buildings that have become gang hangouts.
(Other, more structurally viable buildings are just boarded up.)
Oh, Chicago does stop people on the street. But cops usually d on’t frisk them in search of weapons, though they’re authorized to do so.
Instead, the Police Department fills out “contact cards,” which document incidents that
“may serve a useful police purpose but do not otherwise require any written reports.”
And they include a “gang information section” — though that’s only to be filled out if the police officer “determines that the circumstances may involve gang activity.”
All this constitutes what Emanuel calls “sending a clear message to gang members.”
Alas, it doe sn’t seem to be sinking in.
Again, experience shows that a strong police presence — stop-and-frisk especially — pays big dividends.
It’s a key reason why New York’ s crime levels have been so low.
And why this city’s mayors have not been reduced to begging thugs to go commit crimes where no one can see them.