Chicago residents, officials: Violence is not unique to city

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“We have the largest single number of homicides, but that’s not really comparing apples to apples, because you have to adjust for population. When you adjust for city size, we’re in the middle of the pack. Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis and Philadelphia, lots of other big cities have a higher homicide rate, but we tend to be the focus of the violence problem,” Ander said.

In 2012, there were 506 murders in Chicago, which equates to about 18.7 murders for every 100,00 citizens. A few hours away in Detroit, there were 386 homicides, or 54.6 murders for every 100,000 people last year, a 10 percent increase from 2011. Similarly, although there was a slight decline in homicides in New Orleans in 2012, there were 193 murders, 53.5 homicides for every 100,000 residents.

Yet Chicago continues to be the poster child for homicides. “So many times in our community when violent things happen, they think we’re savages, they think we’re animals, they think that we’re anything but human,” said Pastor Corey Brooks, who held a prayer vigil for the 13 victims of Thursday’s park shooting. “But it’s things like this to show that we’re just as American as everybody else. When our kids get shot, it hurts us. It pains us. When our community has to endure violence it hurts us and it pains us as well.”

“Let us not forget that we should not come together only in times of pain. We should come together in times of joy, and remember this sense of family and community in this room is really the true Chicago, the face of Chicago, the reality of Chicago,” Emanuel said at the vigil.

In recent years, the city has become more strategic about identifying prevention programs that have an impact on youth. The University of Chicago Crime Lab has been tasked with finding such programs and tracking their progress since 2008.

The University of Chicago Crime Lab identified the Becoming A Man youth program in 2009 as a promising success. “We raised some money to scale it up and do a really rigorous study of the program akin to a clinical trial,” Ander said. According to her, the study showed that the kids in the program showed a 44 percent decrease in violent crime arrests. As a result, the city put an additional $2 million into the program.

Chicago has amped up its summer jobs programs. Although Ander said there hadn’t been much evidence detailing whether or not similar programs actually work, the city of Chicago took the leap. As a result, “The kids who got the jobs saw a 51 percent decrease in their violent crime arrests,” she said. “So what the city is doing is starting to accumulate the evidence around the kinds of programs that can work, for which kids do they work and then trying to put money behind those programs and scale them up.”

The Crime Lab is working on studies that identify mathematics tutoring as one of the main ways to keep children in school. Ander says studies show that since Algebra is a high school requirement and has been difficult for many students, it’s often a reason children drop out and consequently become more at risk of being both perpetrators and victims of violence.

It’s the combination of a crime reduction strategy, extra reinforcements and prevention programs that have helped to drive Chicago’s crime rate down this year.

As of Sept. 21, murders were down 21 percent, while shooting incidents declined 23 percent, according to Chicago Police Department spokesman Adam Collins. Overall crime is down 15 percent. “This information equates to 500 fewer shooting victims this year compared to last year, and 113 fewer juvenile shooting victims,” Collins added.

Although Chicago has made a significant decline in crime, McCarthy says the hard work is not done yet.

“Every time somebody is a shot it’s a setback… even if it’s gang-related, even if it’s the most hard individual that individual is the father, brother, sister, sometimes parent of someone else.”

“The fact is, we’re doing better. The fact is, we have a long way to go,” McCarthy said.

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