CHICAGO—This year, Chicago received national attention because if its violence issue, a problem that along with other undesirable traditions has plagued the city for years.
The city saw a huge movement when 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who had returned from performing at President Barack Obama’s inauguration, was shot dead at a park just a mile away from Obama’s Chicago home.
The latest homicide left 6-month-old Jonylah Watkins dead and her father, Jonathan, seriously injured. Jonathan Watkins stood outside of a minivan as he used the front passenger seat as a diaper-changing table Monday afternoon, when a gunman approached and fired shots into the car, striking both father and daughter. Jonylah Watkins was pronounced dead Tuesday morning, police said.
Police say that like many of the more than 500 murders that happened in Chicago last year, this one could have been the result of a gang altercation, leading to an innocent child’s death.
According to Chicago police, Jonathan Watkins has known gang affiliations. Just like so many victims in similar cases, police believe his daughter was not the intended target.
“It’s hard sometimes to be exact,” said Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry McCarthy. “Where we find gang members in shootings with other gang members, it probably has a gang undertone. It’s not an exact science. Where we really can’t separate it as narcotics from gang.”
But for the most recent shooting, “The likelihood is that that’s either going to involve gangs or narcotics, because that’s the background of her father,” McCarthy said.
Many of the shootings happening in Chicago are gang-related, authorities and analysts say. According to the Chicago Crime Commission, an organization that partners with different organizations to “advocate for and educate the public about promising programs and policies” surrounding Chicago’s crime problem, from January to June of 2012, Chicago had 263 homicides, 134 of which were gang-related. The commission’s senior executive director Joseph Ways, who has career experience with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Philadelphia Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department during the Rodney King Riots, says what’s unique about Chicago’s crime issue, along with its entrenched gangs, is random shootings of innocent bystanders.
“By comparison sake, Chicago’s is much worse of a gang issue than Lost [sic] Angeles is. You didn’t have the indiscriminate shootings of innocent victims,” Ways told theGrio.
It’s an issue that many agree gun control wouldn’t necessarily fix. McCarthy, who was the chief at the New York Police Department before coming to Chicago says, “This is not about telling people that they cannot legally own a firearm. What it’s doing is stemming the illegal flow of gun into our streets. And once you’re caught with an illegal gun, you get a significant punishment, so that you’re not available to commit another crime, and at the same time it’s going to deter you from carrying that gun the next time.”
McCarthy insists that the city of Chicago has comprehensive gun laws, but not stringent gun laws. He says the Chicago Police Department would support a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as universal background checks and a requirement to report the loss, theft or transfer of a firearm. This is in line with President Barack Obama’s proposed gun legislation, policies that Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel fully supports.
McCarthy said, “The fact that people don’t do jail time when they’re arrested with firearms in the city of Chicago,” also drives up the violence numbers. “They get off with probation. The Hadiya Pendleton case is the perfect example, because the accused shooter, Michael Ward, was convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm last January, and if we had mandatory minimums for the possession of a firearm, he would not have been on the streets to commit the crime.”
Ways insists that existing gun laws should be enforced, “…but making sure that the prosecutors and the courts charge and try appropriately the people that are charged with carrying weapons.”
The Rev. Corey Brooks, Pastor of New Beginnings Church and Chicago’s famed “Rooftop Pastor,” who is also serving as a spokesman for the Watkins family, says, “We have to have things that are also going to help, from a heart perspective and from a mind perspective, as well.” New Beginnings Church is offering an $11,000 reward to information leading to the arrest of the shooter.
Chicago South Side pastor Bishop Larry Trotter says empowering residents to ignore the longstanding “no snitch” tradition, where witnesses don’t tell police what they saw, would help the city’s crime issue. “We’ve got to kill the apathetic attitude of people who see something in a neighborhood and won’t report it. I hate to say it, but there are people who look at the news and see kids are killed, and it’s so common, they just say ‘Well…’ it’s not gripping their hearts.”
Crime in Chicago is down, police say
Despite the elevated national attention that Chicago has received on its violence issue lately, the city’s crime numbers are down from 2012. Police say through March 11, the city had experienced 61 homicides this year versus 79 for the same time frame last year.
In February, Chicago had 14 murders, “the best since January, 1957,” according to McCarthy.
Chicago’s top cop said creating a comprehensive gang violence reduction strategy has been most effective in bringing the numbers down. Last year, he and his team built the strategy starting with a gang audit where they identified every gang member, gang, turf and who they were in conflict with. That information is available in databases and “right in the hands of officers on the streets,” McCarthy said, so that if a gang shooting happens, police are equipped with all of the players involved, their rivals and where possible retaliation would come from. “Retaliation is the first thing that we need to stop,” he said.
Another part of the strategy, McCarthy says, is eliminating individual narcotics markets. When Chicago police discover drug markets, they send police there, get the community involved, and bring city services to the area.
“We’re making significant progress,” McCarthy said, “We haven’t won this battle yet, but we are very very clearly making progress on it.”
Renita D. Young is a Chicago-based multimedia journalist. Follow her on Twitter @RenitaDYoung.