Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Chicago and other big cities - havens for criminals?


More and more reports out of Chicago suggest that the city - or, at least, parts of the city - are becoming havens for the lawless, secure areas for criminals to prey on others as they please.  Furthermore, it's apparently not alone in that.

Heather MacDonald recently reported on 'How Chicago's streets became the Wild West', and claimed that pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement and the ACLU was responsible.

Someone was shot in Chicago every 150 minutes during the first five months of 2016. Someone was murdered every 14 hours, and the city saw nearly 1,400 nonfatal shootings and 240 fatalities from gunfire. Over Memorial Day weekend, 69 people were shot, nearly one an hour, topping the previous year's tally of 53 shootings. The violence is spilling from Chicago's gang-infested South and West Sides into the business district downtown. Lake Shore Drive has seen drive-by shootings and robberies.

The growing mayhem is the result of Chicago police officers' withdrawing from proactive enforcement, making the city a dramatic example of what I have called the Ferguson effect. Since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, the conceit that American policing is lethally racist has dominated media and political discourse, from the White House on down. Cops in minority neighborhoods in Chicago and other cities have responded by backing away from pedestrian stops and public-order policing; criminals are flourishing in the vacuum.

. . .

Police officers who try to intervene in this disorder often face virulent pushback. "People are a hundred times more likely to resist arrest," a police officer who has worked a decade and a half on the South Side told me. "People want to fight you; they swear at you. 'F--- the police, we don't have to listen,' they say. I haven't seen this kind of hatred towards the police in my career."

Antipolice animus is nothing new in Chicago. But the post-Ferguson Black Lives Matter narrative about endemically racist cops has made the street dynamic much worse. A detective told me: "From patrol to investigation, it's almost an undoable job now. If I get out of my car, the guys get hostile right away." Bystanders sometimes aggressively interfere, requiring more officers to control the scene.

. . .

On Jan. 1 [Chicago's Police Department] rolled out a new form for documenting investigatory stops to meet ACLU demands. The new form, called a contact card, was two pages long, with 70 fields of information to be filled out. This template dwarfs even arrest reports and takes at least 30 minutes to complete. Every card goes to the ACLU for review.

The arrangement had the intended deterrent effect: Police stops dropped nearly 90% in the first quarter of 2016. Criminals have become emboldened by the police disengagement. "Gangbangers now realize that no one will stop them," says a former high-ranking official with the department. People who wouldn't have carried a gun before are now armed, a South Side officer told me. Cops say the solution is straightforward: "If tomorrow we still had to fill out the new forms, but they no longer went to the ACLU, stops would increase," a detective said.

There's more at the link.

Even upscale areas of the city are vulnerable to the upsurge in crime.  CWB Chicago reported earlier this month:

A robbery crew targeted people along the Lakefront Path near Belmont Harbor yesterday afternoon—repeatedly tossing bikes in front of oncoming bicyclists in an effort to knock people down so they could be robbed according to multiple witnesses and one known victim.

Again, more at the link.

Karl Denninger's response was trenchant and uncompromising:

Why would anyone continue to live in such a ****hole?  Why does anyone put up with the wildings on Michigan Avenue, assaults near North Avenue on the beach, problems at Navy Pier and now, it appears, the inability to ride a bike worth more than $100 on the Lakefront path -- unless you want to be assaulted and robbed.

Time to leave folks, if you're one of the producers, and let the city implode into a writhing mass of dependency, rot, ruin and crime.

More at the link.

Back in 2013 Chicago Magazine claimed that 'Chicago’s Criminals Are Getting Away With Murder'.  Looks like they weren't just reporting current reality, but prophesying future trends as well.  Chicago's far from alone in facing that problem, of course.  Large cities all over the country are facing an upsurge in violent crime - and their law enforcement departments and officers are often hamstrung by 'politically correct' leadership.

I ascribe a lot of this to what I've come to call the 'entitlement generation' - those who are used to having everything given to them, and who've been brought up without even the faintest concept of a sense of responsibility for their actions.  That's spread down even to young criminals, who seem to genuinely believe that if they want something, it's all right to simply take it, or to steal something from others, sell it, and use the money to buy what they want.  Witness the complete lack of respect for the law, or conventional moral or ethical standards, in the reaction of his cousin to the death of a teenage thief, earlier this year, at the hands of his intended victim:  “You have to understand, you have to look at it from a child's point of view that was raised in the hood. How he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school?"





Contrast that with the attitudes of this young man - also black, also from an economically stressed and socially challenged area, but doing things the right way.  I wish there were more like him . . . but I fear there aren't enough.  The moral and mental vacuum demonstrated by the two girls in the video above is becoming more and more prevalent.  It - and the ACLU's support for and tolerance of those who espouse it - is, I submit, a big part of the reason why Chicago's crime figures are going through the roof.

That sort of social abyss is one of the most important reasons why Miss D. and I moved away from a big-city environment earlier this year.  We now live in a smaller community, in a much more self-reliant area with pretty solid attitudes towards crime, law and order, and we feel much more secure for it.  If any significant group of people around here began to behave as the hoodlums in Chicago appear to be doing, they'd damn soon be straightened out - not by the cops, but by local residents, who wouldn't tolerate such conduct for a skinny minute.  They'd only call the cops to clean up the mess after they'd finished!

Peter

19 comments:

Roy said...

I daresay that if the forces of gun control and citizen disarmament win, this sort of thing will spread throughout the entire country.

Roy said...

Another thing: During the period of the "Wild West", the middle 1800's to the early 1900's, the murder rate was *higher* in cities such as Chicago and New York. It should have been called the "Wild East".

m4 said...

Something bugs me about that first story.

""If tomorrow we still had to fill out the new forms, but they no longer went to the ACLU, stops would increase," a detective said."

What gives? Surely the bit that makes it difficult is that it's a mammoth piece of paperwork? Does that mean they won't fill it out properly if nobody checks it? What is he trying to say? o.O

Bibliotheca Servare said...

I wondered the same thing. Honestly I'm not sure whether I can really feel bad about the police having their every move scrutinized, even if it's by an organization like the present-day version of the ACLU. (The ACLU has a noble ideal behind it...but in my opinion they're no longer truly dedicated to that ideal. The ACLU who grudgingly, but nobly, defended a Nazi group's right to march in a Jewish neighborhood, despite -understandably- their loathing for the Nazis in question, is no more, as far as I can tell.) I don't like the consequences inasmuch as it means more people getting hurt...but maybe it'll help remind folks that, per the Supreme Court, the police are *not* there to protect them. Their job (and understand, I don't dislike the police at all -minus the corrupt, authoritarian ones- I just can't stand the idea, pervasive today, that police officers are somehow supposed to be magic talismans whose very reason for existing is to render self-defense and basic prudence no longer necessary...y'know?) is less about preventing theft, or murder, or other crimes, and more about documenting it when it occurs and then catching the alleged perpetrators...any deterrent effects are entirely secondary, at least in theory. Places like New York and Chicago have had this principle abandoned, for a variety of reasons, from organized crime to the childish mentality of many urban dwellers w/ regards to personal defense...and the city governments do their best to enforce and encourage this childish attitude, again, for many reasons. In my opinion, at least, lol.

Dang, and I was just planning on saying "yeah, I know...what *was* he trying to say?" ...I can't stop myself! Lol. :-)

raven said...

"New Mogadishu".

Hideousdwarf said...

Peter, I largely agree but...
As to my generation, we are represented as college students in the media, but fewer and fewer of us go to or complete college, and no one talks about those of us who have started business.
There are a ton of responsible people in my generation, but we are just keeping our heads down and trying to live our lives.
Sure, we have a lot of loudmouths, but we also have no actual power. We don't run the ACLU, or have candidates for political office. We don't have a say even at the local level, and certainly not at the federal (Sanders included. He is a frigging dinosaur, the only reason he has traction in the younger crowd is he has all the political thought of a teenager).
I guess just give us some time to get out from under Gen X. There is a lot of baggage for us to deal with because no one thought how their brilliant ideas would screw us.

Bibliotheca Servare said...

Holy cow, I just learned that, evidently, the ACLU is opposing the use of "terrorist watch lists" as an excuse to deny otherwise ordinary Americans their 2nd amendment rights! Wow, who knew! I figured they'd be delighted to cast aside due process of law when it came to evil, evil guns! I'm using a lot of exclamation points. I'll stop. *anyway* I was pleasantly surprised...I still have to read the statement, but I'm told that they still managed to imply that the 2nd amendment is less important...but hell, at least they're defending it, even if reluctantly! It's amazing how many people just throw the constitution out the window when the word "terrorist" is used. It's not a "terrorist watch list". It's a secret government list of suspected undesirables. Senators have been on it. Three year old children. It's a terrible idea to use such a list as a basis for stripping people of their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms without their ever having been convicted of a crime. And the freaking *democrats* are leading the charge, with all too many republicans following close behind! Oh, my aching head...

Bibliotheca Servare said...

Sorry, I may have misunderstood...it looks like they opposed *background check bills* that used the "terrorist watch lists". Here's a link: https://mobile.twitter.com/katherinemiller/status/745034612372443137

Anonymous said...

Until you are willing to get over your PC nonsense and realize that we in the united states DO NOT have a crime problem; We have a BLACK AFRICAN problem. That the problem is genetic and CANNOT BE FIXED, and that the same problem exists in EVERY BLACK AFRICAN COMMUNITY ON THE Planet, can we address any kind of meaningful solution. The only "racist" are people like you that refuse to acknowledge that the problem even exists for fear of offending the ultra violent crime gangs and their ACLU leadership.

Old NFO said...

PCism is killing Chiraq, Detroit, Balmore, Filthydelphia, Atlanta and other major cities...

When it degrades into a shooting war that spills out into the financial districts, or the burbs, then and ONLY then will anything be done, and it will be too little, too late.

BigFire said...

Here's an article from 2012 that details how political machine and gangsters work hand in hand: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/

Peter said...

@Anonymous at 2:07 PM: I note that you carefully hide behind a cloak of anonymity when you make such inflammatory statements. Congratulations. That makes you part of the problem, not of the solution. I venture to suggest that I probably know a hell of a lot more than you do about black Africans, from several decades of lived experience all over that continent. Furthermore, there isn't a single geneticist in the world who'll agree with you. Scientifically and medically speaking, you couldn't be more wrong.

As for me being frightened of "offending the ultra violent crime gangs and their ACLU leadership" . . . you clearly have never met me, haven't read many of my more than eight years of posts on this blog, and know nothing about my personal history. In short, I don't have the problem. You do.

JohninMd.(HELP?!??) said...

Not to say there aren't good cops in CHI-RAQ, but the combination of gangs, corrupt pols and some police, why, I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that Chicago is becoming ungovernable. I don't think a lot's changed since Capone....

Trimegistus said...

What's behind the crime problem?

Democrats.

Think of all of America's big cities. All of them have chronic crime. All of them have large criminal gangs. And all of them have Democrat political machines.

This is not a coincidence.

Who gets out the vote on Election Day (including shuttling the "floaters" from polling place to polling place)? Why, energetic young "community organizers" with prison tattoos, gold teeth, and wads of hundred dollar bills in their back pockets to take care of minor problems. Major problems get taken care of by a carload of other young "community organizers" with bats and steel-toed boots.

In exchange for their enthusiastic volunteer work on Election Day, these young "community organizers" can depend on the city political machine to quash investigations, lowball plea-bargain deals, and lean on witnesses.

The gangs give money and material assistance to the politicians, who in turn feed taxpayer money to "community organizations" and steer law enforcement away. The El Rukns gang in Chicago for years got Federal aid money for their work in "organizing the community."

Quite simply, the Democratic Party is a massive criminal enterprise. Only when every Democrat politician, party worker, and media enabler is in jail or under the dirt will this country be able to solve its problems.

DaddyBear said...

Big cities have always been havens for criminals, and always will be. Chicago is the end result of decades of social experimentation, the destruction of families in poor communities, and the lack of fathers around to whip the ass of sons who get out of line.

Anonymous said...

Is there a mirror site? The capitalist pigs at WSJ.com want me to subscribe to read that.

Antibubba

drjim said...

13% of the population is allowed to commit 50% (or more) of the crime.

Thanks, LBJ!

deb harvey said...

it is written that the wheat grows with the tares until the end.
there are getting to be so many tares that the wheat is practically invisible in some areas.
the day of the Lord will be terrible but it would be so nice to have Him clean up a bit in this country before the terrible day. i'd like to live out my days in peace--pipe dream, i know.

Dav343 said...

She was alerted to the break in, she informed the police, then somehow she beat the Police to her house? How did she beat the Police? One must question wether the Police would have shown up if she had not shot the thief.