Newly inaugurated Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is facing the first bona fide emergency of his administration in the flurry of apparently recreational attacks on random passerby by youthful mobs:
Rahm Emanuel won over Chicago voters with his well-articulated plans to address many of the city’s long-standing challenges. Nobody thought to ask him how he would respond if youth mobs were terrorizing the Magnificent Mile.
That’s what everyone wants to know now that the summer tourist season has arrived — and with it a rash of senseless assaults in the Near North Side retail and recreation haven. It’s Emanuel’s first mayoral emergency, and it’s national news. What’s he going to do about it?
That was the question of the day as Emanuel’s police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, was confirmed by the City Council on Wednesday. “We have a plan, we are arresting people and we are going to make this trend stop,” McCarthy said.
The plan calls for a “marginal increase” in personnel, especially around transit stops and other areas where teens congregate. Officers will practice what McCarthy called “behavioral profiling,” targeting potential troublemakers and breaking things up before trouble starts.
We may have a perfect storm for this sort of violence. We’re entering the summer months in which there are more potential victims in the shops and attractions on the Near North Side, school is out, the unemployment rate for young people in Chicago is 25%, 33% for some subgroups (I presume the underemployment rate is much, much higher), and as a society we’ve become inured to violence through constant exposure in entertainment and on the nightly news.
Frankly, I’m skeptical that greater police presence will be effective. You cannot harden every target, a greater presence on the Magnificent Mile will inevitably mean a decreased presence elsewhere, and the ability of groups of people to reconnoiter, communicate among themselves, and assemble on short notice is unparalleled.
I can’t help but wonder if monitoring social networking sites or cellphone activity wouldn’t be useful. Law enforcement needs to match the technological capabilities of lawbreakers and I don’t just mean carrying bigger, faster weapons.
Heh. The spam filter may have not let the original pass. Try this:
I was in downtown Chicago just the other day. The issue is real as a heart attack, and its right in front of your face. There is a media (and mayoral) whitewash going on right now, but I think its breaking down quickly. The issue cannot be contained.
I’m talking Michigan Ave. between the river and 900 north, and perhaps to North Ave. At least that’s the area I saw. Others may not know Chicago, but Dave, you understand what that really means. Can you imagine more premier real estate??
But we are sanitizing it. And I get the impression you are sanitizing it. “Youthful mobs?” “Young people?” Bull-digestive waste. Complete and total bull-alimentary canal effluent. Black gangs, pure and simple. Predatory thugs. Clockwork Orange stuff. Stop with the political correctness.
My wife, mother in law and daughter were going to go into the city today and this weekend. Not now. Rahm is playing race politics and not dealing with this straight up. Good luck mag mile…..
PS – This cannot be anything other than testing the new Mayor’s mettle. Daley would have put the word out. Stop, or heads will be cracked.
The analogy had occurred to me as well.
No, I had no idea that the gangs involved were exclusively black. I hadn’t received that impression from the news coverage which may be, as you note, “sanitized” and have no first-hand knowledge of the situation.
More support for the point I made above: unemployment rate for blacks under 25: 33%. No jobs, no likelihood of jobs, maybe no need of jobs. Bored.
900 North? Bummer. That’s my former Nordstrom. A guy named Stuart there used to pick out suits for me before it occurred to me that I’m a writer and don’t need suits.
The gangs in Chicago are black. Did someone not guess that it was black gangs? The gangs in LA are increasingly Hispanic. In NYC gangs come in every color, including white. San Francisco gangs are . . . well, priced out of the city. In the Inland Empire it’s white supremacists and Hispanics. Back in the old days even my people, the Jews, had gangs.
Poor people living in slums form gangs. In European cities it’s Gypsies and Africans and Eastern Europeans.
I don’t think the story is really flash-mobs or race, I think it’s good old-fashioned gang activity but emboldened to move against the Mag Mile. These are mostly smash-and-grab and muggings. What’s new isn’t the tech but the fact that they feel ballsy enough to pull a Willie Sutton and go where the money is. Something went wrong that bangers think they can move on Michigan Avenue. Given that it’s Chicago I have to guess that someone isn’t getting paid off.
Not Clockwork Orange as much as Oliver, with rules and standard of living following close behind.
Can we please stop mis-using the term “flash mob”?
Flash mobs are good things. This is a flash mob:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE
These feral kids are just a mob.
dave, why didn’t you mention that the attackers were all black? I mean, if they had been white and if the victims had been black…you (and everyone else) would have mentioned it?
shouldn’t the media report ALL the facts?