In Chicago, even the president's neighborhood may be unsafe

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CHICAGO—As Chicago’s violence issue continues to sit in the spotlight, incidents happening in President Barack Obama’s hometown have become national news, an unfair scrutiny, many residents argue.

Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel contend that after the city topped 500 murders in 2012 and this year saw murders that shook the nation of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton and 6-month-old Jonylah Watkins, a new comprehensive crime fighting strategy has driven numbers down.

But with recent news of a 15-year-old boy who was found shot four blocks away from the Obamas’ home, many people have again been alerted to Chicago’s reputation for sporadic shootings.

‘Crime can pretty much happen anywhere’

Hyde Park resident Ava Hawkins has lived near the Obamas’ home her entire life. She says while the area has been safe, crime has dropped since she was younger. “When I was growing up, the crime was a lot worse in the area,” said Hawkins.

Fifteen-year-old Cornelious German was found shot in the Bronzeville neighborhood, just north of Hyde Park, where the Obamas live. Hawkins says the incident proves that “Wherever it is that there’s guns or where there’s a large population of people, crime can pretty much happen anywhere.”

The crime issue in these particular neighborhoods is a microcosm of what happens in a city with such stringent racial and class lines, born out of a history of intense segregation, she says. Although Chicago is diverse by population, Hawkins says one can travel just about anywhere in the city, cross the street and feel as if they’re in a different city.

‘We probably have more crime than anybody else’

Such is the case in parts of Bronzeville and Hyde Park. “It’s a totally different environment where that incident happened than where the president lives,” Hawkins said. “People assume that Bronzeville is as safe as Hyde Park, but it’s not.”

Bronzeville resident, lawyer and business owner Stephen Mitchell agrees. He said even though his neighborhood is close to the president’s home and police say crime has gone down, it doesn’t feel safer. “We probably have more crime than anybody else. (Police will) come through for a day or two and try to keep people from hanging out, but after that, it’ll be somebody else,” Mitchell said.

McCarthy has said that to residents outside of Chicago who learn about incidents, there is a “perception issue,” an assumption that the entire city has the same crime issue and it’s worse than it really is. He contends that the larger violence in the city typically happens in certain parts of the city repeatedly.

“Hyper-locally,” that is possible between Bronzeville and Hyde Park, two areas where, according to residents, are considered affluent, but have “rough spots,” more so in Bronzeville, Mitchell says. Furthermore, although the two neighborhoods may be completely different according to Hawkins and Mitchell, they both lay in the 2^nd Police District along with other neighborhoods, so their crime numbers are computed collectively.

According to recent statistics compiled by the Chicago Police Department, overall shooting incidents in the 2^nd Police District have dropped 24 percent from 25 incidents to 19 incidents, as of April 14, 2013.

Along with Hawkins and Mitchell, University of Chicago Crime Lab founding executive director Roseanna Anders says the fact that similar incidents happen in so-called affluent parts of Chicago shows that gun violence and crime as a whole can happen anywhere.

‘We’re in a different place’

“Acknowledging the reality that any incident can cause the sense that the community isn’t safe, and perception can also change behavior and has an impact,” Anders says. “The perception is also important even if it’s out of sync with what the reality is.”

Additionally, Anders says, crime numbers tend to fluctuate from year to year, “so drawing a super strong conclusion, even if there were a couple more homicides in one year versus another, doesn’t necessarily tell you that there is this trajectory or this thing they’re on a long-term increase.”

But Anders says compared with the 90’s, Chicago’s violence issue is much better controlled. “It’s also important not to overstate the magnitude of the homicide problem. We’re in a very different place that we were 15, 20 years ago.”

Renita D. Young is a multimedia journalist based in Chicago. Follow her on Twitter @RenitaDYoung