In the wake of the most violent weekend year-to-date in Chicago in her column in the Chicago Tribune Kristen McQueary declaims:
In addition to millions spent annually in local, state and federal budgets on crime reduction, taxpayers in Illinois fronted more than $50 million toward anti-violence programs in 2010, right before the gubernatorial election during a time when the state couldn’t pay its existing bills. Gov. Pat Quinn scraped together millions in taxpayer resources, and repeatedly during the next four years, to combat violence in Chicago.
That effort resulted in no measurable reduction in violent crime — and a federal criminal probe — after an audit revealed the money went wildly unaccounted for. It was largely misspent and wasted. It went to political cronies and clouted organizations. Today, the state and the city of Chicago still spend millions on anti-violence efforts. How’s it working out?
Without getting to the root causes of violence — poverty, abuse, family breakdowns, addiction, lack of personal responsibility and illegal use of guns — Chicago will continue to be a city thrashing. Lightfoot can’t snap her fingers and solve it. But enough has been studied to point her in the right direction. She needs Pritzker’s help. The state still has more heft to drive existing resources to some of these communities than the city can alone.
Through data-driven information-gathering, the experts know where the violence persists, where gang members loiter, where mental health services are nonexistent, where foreclosures abound, where schools are underperforming, where violence is life. If the city wants change, it could start by microtargeting those ZIP codes. Break down the silos of government that make it impossible for the most vulnerable to access existing programs. Get state and city resources under one roof or at least on the same block for mental health services, for job training, for trauma counseling, for help.
Pick a ward. Pick a five-block radius. Try.
Gary MacDougal is a mostly-retired, successful businessman and onetime leader of the Illinois Republican Party who has spent years studying the causes of violence and trying to get government to be responsive and efficient. His advice is a full-throated effort with the mayor and the governor tasking it as a top priority, every day. Every. Single. Day.
I can’t say I know a better idea. I can’t say we need more money or higher taxes or more cops or more marches.
What I can say, living on Chicago’s South Side for nearly 20 years, is that what we’re doing is not working. It’s not even close.
J. B. Pritzker and Lori Lightfoot chased the car and they caught it. They won their elections. Now it’s their turn to take ownership of what’s going on in Chicago. They can’t solve Chicago’s problems by throwing money at them. For one thing the cupboard is already bare. For another Chicago already has more police officers relative to population of any other major U. S. city, a typical Chicago cop gets a total of more than $100K per year, and previous increases have not reduced violent crime.
Chicago already had among the nation’s toughest gun laws. They were struck down by the Supreme Court.
Not to put too fine a point on it but Rahm Emanuel’s apparent strategy was to drive as many poor blacks from Chicago as possible while funding amenities for well to do Millennials. We’ll know just how well he succeeded when the results of the 2020 census are made known. I’m betting it will reveal that Houston has overtaken Chicago in population.
