Chicago’s Homicides

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on Chicago’s obviously excessive homicide rate:

The Chicago Police Department reported 762 homicides in 2016, the most in two decades and more than in the cities of New York and Los Angeles combined. The 57% increase was the biggest spike in 60 years. Shootings jumped 46% to 3,550, with most occurring in poor and minority neighborhoods on the South and West sides. Police have blamed gang activity, as most victims had previously been identified for their gang ties or past arrests.

But gangs aren’t new, and another culprit is an increase in caution among police who have come under widespread political attack. Street demonstrations followed the November 2015 release of a video capturing the killing of 17-year old Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times by a white officer. The officer will stand trial for first-degree murder while police remain under investigation by the Justice Department.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also targeted Chicago police, and the department in August 2015 agreed to track investigatory stops and pat-downs to avert a lawsuit. Officers must submit detailed two-page reports for each stop, which a former federal judge and ACLU review for bias.

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told CBS’s “60 Minutes” this weekend that the increase in paperwork has taken time away from proactive policing and made officers more reluctant to stop suspicious individuals. According to CBS, the number of stops declined from 49,257 in August 2015 to 8,859 a year later while arrests fell by a third to 6,900. While current Superintendent Eddie Johnson denied that police were retreating, he noted at a press conference this weekend that anger at police has “emboldened” criminals. He also blamed lax enforcement of Chicago’s strict antigun laws.

All of this suggests that the demonization of cops has contributed to Chicago’s surge of violence, with the principal victims being young minorities, many of them innocent bystanders. Perhaps the President could include an elegy for these black lives in his farewell.

Most of the murders are being committed in a handful of neighborhoods on the South and West Sides of the city and the people in those neighborhoods have a justifiably complicated attitude towards the police. They need and want police protection but they don’t want their young men tortured or murdered by the police.

Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has the chore of balancing priorities, among which are the interests of the police department, the interests of Chicago’s public employees’ unions, and the interests of Chicagoans. He’s already tipped his hand on his preferred strategy: let the city become decreasingly livable for ordinary Chicagoans and attract more of the well-to-do. How else do you interpret closing neighborhood schools, allowing the homicide rate to skyrocket, and spending the city’s dwindling resources on amenities primarily appealing to more prosperous Chicagoans?