At RealClearPolitics Chicagoan Tom Bevan makes a plea to Illinois Gov. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot:
The truth is that children in Chicago are in far less danger of dying from COVID than they are from getting shot and killed.  According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, over the last 18 months there have been 5,500 COVID-related deaths in the city of Chicago. Only 10 of those (.0018%) were 18 years old or younger.  
Contrast that with the number of children 18 years old or younger  who’ve been killed (36) or wounded (203) by gun violence in Chicago in just the first 8½ months of 2021. The numbers from 2020 are even worse: 115 children  killed and 646 wounded.   
Remember, too, that most of this violence is confined to just a few neighborhoods in the city and that the overwhelming majority of these victims are African American kids. 
Over the last year and a half we’ve been told minority communities needed extra resources because they’ve been disproportionately impacted by COVID. We’ve been told that Black Lives Matter. Shouldn’t those same principles apply when it comes to children dying in the streets of America’s third-largest city on a depressingly regular basis?  
For years, our leaders have thrown up their hands at this violence and taken the easy way out by blaming a lack of gun control laws in neighboring states. (The city of Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.) At the same time, these leaders have been too often quick to demonize police, enacted policies like eliminating cash bail, and prosecutors have continued to let violent criminals back onto our streets. And so kids keep dying. 
Maybe if our leaders started treating gun violence in Chicago as a disease – a virus and a plague – they would devote the same level of attention and effort to eradicating it.  
I think that the reason that Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot aren’t devoting more attention to the surge in homicides in Chicago is that they can’t think of anything politically acceptable to do about it. Most of the homicides are gang-related or people getting caught by stray bullets. A good start would be to stop releasing career criminals without bail but that’s against the present orthodoxy. Problems include the collapse of the family in the black community, lack of economic opportunity in a city from which companies are fleeing faster than they’re being formed, and a public education system that’s good primarily for those who have jobs in them but they can’t say any of those things without political repercussions.
“I think that the reason that Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot aren’t devoting more attention to the surge in homicides in Chicago is that they can’t think of anything politically acceptable to do about it.”
Me too. The perfect example of personal self interest above the realities of difficult leadership. They ran for the job. Buck up or resign. Else they are just self aggrandizing fucks. Evil people.
There is no shortage of local community people, mostly the hated religious types, willing to take risks and band with government in efforts. Obama shook down businesses for political gain. Fuckwad. Lightfoot is just plain stupid and incompetent.
At some point you just say if the voters can’t see their way to voting in people who can be effective, then just move away and leave the cesspool to those who obviously desire it. I know that’s dystopian, but that’s where we are. I care dearly about about good public policy, but tomorrow I can go play golf, go out on a boat, fish, work out at the gym, and take a few calls about issues at our portfolio companies. I don’t have to dodge bullets.
ABC concludes that the problem in these neighborhoods is still too much policing.
https://www.kfornow.com/syndicated-article/?id=1349287
I think we all realize that the Black underclass, educationally more than financially, has developed a subculture that’s going to be around for a long, long time.
It has it’s own language, antiheros, fast held beliefs, mores, now flags and anthems.
Black children and elders may wish the violence to subside, but in reality, they have no agency. If the active young wish to shoot family flesh to ribbons the very old and very young have no say.
They reject policing, so policing will be done at the margins, a lighter touch, and little deterrence.
Yes, there’s a subculture but most of the people in those neighborhoods want more, tougher policing rather than less.
They’re not going to get it though.
Truth told, they want safety and stability,
not more police.
Maybe it’s time to get bulletproof glass into building codes.