For a good number of years now, crime has been plaguing the city of Chicago in ways that at times make it seem like the metropolis could be a violent third-world nation thousands of miles away. The hard truth is that the murder rate in gun-controlled Chicago is worse than 80 percent of American communities, and the safety of streets in many of the city’s neighborhoods make it more dangerous than some of the most war-torn regions of Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq.
The numbers speak for themselves; in Chicago last year, there were 799 homicides, up 57 percent from 2015. At least 90 percent of those murders were committed with guns, the majority of which were purchased out-of-state, often in nearby Indiana.
Shootings are an epidemic in Chicago, with 3,569 people being shot last year — almost 10 per day — in incidents that were not homicides. Nearly 50 percent of those people were under the age of 25. These numbers are higher than figures for all of New York City and Los Angeles combined. In fact, the numbers are so high that they’re skewing national averages for gun violence, leading to mistaken conclusions about the effectiveness of gun permits for self-defense.
In 2017, the number of people shot in January alone surpassed 300. Despite this, less than four percent of perpetrators in all shooting cases were even arrested. Only 26 percent of murder cases in the city are solved. Despite these appalling numbers, federal prosecutors under President Obama made just one prosecution per 100 guns seized by police. Youth violence is at or near all-time recorded highs.
While it’s true that these statistics don’t exist in a vacuum — there are any number of other factors that affect them, such as abysmal public schools, the myriad of broken homes and rampant drug abuse — they’re proof that the government has not helped the citizens of this once-proud city escape the scourge of poverty, gangs and immorality.
Neither former President Obama, who was a Senator from Illinois and prior to that a state senator from Chicago’s South Side nor Obama’s former presidential chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who is now the mayor of Chicago, have made much of a dent in the apocryphal toll brought about by violent crime.
In fact, under Obama, the death toll in Chicago nearly surpassed the number of American troops who died in Iraq during the two terms of presidential predecessor George W. Bush. And although it’s easy to blame local city politics, which have been dominated by a Democratic political machine for more than a century, it’s actually many federal policies which are to blame for some of Chicago’s worst deficiencies.
Congressman Bobby Rush, a Democrat who defeated Obama in 2000 in a race for his House seat, said, “We have not yet at this moment, including the eight years of Obama, had someone in the White House who really cared about this city and about these problems here in the city of Chicago.”
President Trump has talked repeatedly of being a “law and order” president who will get “tough on crime.” On January 2, Trump tweeted, “Chicago murder rate is record setting — 4,331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can’t do it, he must ask for Federal help!”
Later in the month, Trump tweeted again, writing, “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible “carnage” going on — 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016) — I will send in the Feds!”
Perhaps as a first step the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) has recently announced the permanent relocation of new agents to the Midwestern city as part of a “Chicago Crime Guns Strike Force” being formed. The agency requested a surge of agents for a 30 to 60 day period willing to volunteer for duty in the Windy City. This would supplement the efforts of the Chicago Police to curb gun and other violence.
Former Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy blamed the social justice group Black Lives Matter for fostering an environment that’s anti-police in the city. “What’s happening — and this is ironic — is that a movement with the goal of saving black lives at this point is getting black lives taken, because 80 percent of our murder victims here in Chicago are black males. Less than half of 1 percent of all the shootings in this city involve police officers shooting civilians,” said McCarthy.
The former chief believes that President Trump may be able to turn around the notable lack of effort on behalf of the Department of Justice under ex-President Obama. “I think the Trump election quite frankly is a reaction to that,” he said. “I think the people are tired of career politicians who’ve never really had a job telling us how we should think and how we should act.”
For its part, agents at the ATF would not confirm whether its new task force was formed upon orders of the White House, but at least one agent wouldn’t deny it. President Trump has called the city “a war zone” and said that “Afghanistan is not like what’s happening in Chicago.”
Among other problems, local newspapers have reported that many of Chicago’s wealthiest citizens have left the city or are making plans to do so. Last year, the city’s bonds were downgraded to a level just above junk status after Illinois State Supreme Court declared a law boosting Chicago’s pension funds void. Credit analysts said that a further downgrade of the bonds may be possible without “a realistic plan that puts the pension funds on an affordable path toward solvency”; the city’s Board of Education bonds are already at junk status.
A recent case involving the torturing of a white teenager at the hands of four African-American youths has put Chicago in a renewed media spotlight while a new study shows that African-Americans are the most at-risk group in the city for crimes such as murder.
Certainly, if President Trump is going to do anything about Chicago, he has no shortage of problems to tackle.
~ Conservative Zone
