The Christian Science Monitor muses over why murders have spiked in Chicago:
As of March 30, there were 135 homicides in Chicago during the first quarter of the year – a 71 percent increase from the same period last year when 79 homicides were reported, according to Chicago police data. The homicide totals are the highest they have been since 1999. A Tribune analysis showed shootings citywide were also up from last year 73 percent, totally 727 reported.
[…]
Chicago has been on the precipice of an education crisis. Roughly 27,000 city teachers have worked since July without a contract, The Christian Science Monitor reported on Friday. Chicago public schools, the nation’s third largest school district, faces a $1.1 billion budget deficit and an even larger multi-billion dollar debt from pensions.
Financial struggles at the state and city level could also be influencing crime rates. Illinois has gone nearly a year without a state budget. And Chicago residents have been battling an unemployment rate slowly ticking upward, reaching 7.2 percent unemployment in February, according to the Chicago Business Journal.
But Mayor Emanuel has mainly attributed the rising 2016 crime rate to a newly paralyzed police force, which is where the new interim superintendent Eddie Johnson comes into the picture.
I think that all of those explanations are fatuous. Do they seriously believe that a new teachers’ contract or a state budget would reduce the homicide rate? Chicago’s general unemployment rate can’t be blamed either.
More to the point, Chicago’s black youth unemployment rate is around 50%.
Malaise in the police force isn’t much of an explanation, either. We’ve had bad policing in Chicago for decades. Do the police officers genuinely think that less scrutiny is what the force needs to do a more effective job?
Basically, Chicago’s problem and Illinois’s greatest problem is bad government. Everything else is a symptom.
I don’t know, it looks like the police have dialed it back: “gun seizures and police stops were down and murder rates were up overall.”
After Freddie Gray’s death, arrests in Baltimore declined and homicides and other crimes increased:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/06/in-baltimore-arrests-are-down-and-crime-is-way-up.html
It seems to me that after controversial police shootings, the police naturally avoid neighborhoods and encounters that would inflame public opinion, reducing the deterrent effect of police presence, and criminal conduct is increased in light of the belief that the police have reduced their presence, and witnesses become more reluctant to call the police.
How active has Black Lives Matter been in Chicago? It seems wherever they set up shop blacks start killing each other in higher numbers.
I agree that Chicago’s corrupt, fiscally foolish government is a big part of their problems. However, I also think PD has a viable point regarding the negative influence the string of controversial police shootings has had on the police in their diminished proactive behavior dealing with high crime and gang problems ingrained in minority communities.
A rise in crime has been apparent all over the country, in big cities such as Los Angeles, in a large part because of their fear of prosecution, when quelling crime, from either vague innuendos of misdoing or mob demands from groups like Black Lives Matter. Basically, there doesn’t seem to be a baseline of proper police officer conduct anymore that can escape the sensational criticism of such media highlighted groups. Consequently, police seem to be doing less preventative policing, while watching their own backs, reputations and careers more.
The reason I don’t believe that is that the increase predates the highly-publicized police killings in Chicago, Baltimore, and Ferguson.
I did not know that, though I think I read the Chicago PD denied doing anything different.
IIRC, I don’t think there is much linkage between police activity and homicide reduction, or if it exists it is weak. They mostly just catch the bad guys after the fact. OTOH, if the Chicago killings are mostly gang related, it could be a factor.
Steve