CHICAGO | Economic & Business Development

[SIGSEGV]

My mom called me to make sure I'm safe after the shooting at the Mercy Hospital today.... I've never stepped foot at Mercy Hospital!

[UPChicago]

I find it so disturbing when people cop out on confronting the issue of murder in the City of Chicago. Regardless of how segregated crime is or isn't, 600-700 murders annually in a "World Class" city is pathetic and frankly an indictment of the City itself. This dismissive attitude around murder is one of many reasons the clearance rate is an abysmal 17.5%. Its clear no one gives a shit about fixing the problem and until someone in a leadership position does, the city rightfully deserves its global reputation as a center of crime. It's like dismissing cancer in the body because its isolated to one region of the body, it's idiotic and needs to stop.

[marothisu]

I mentioned a few times that it's unacceptable, but you must have missed that while you also missed the point of the entire post. The point is that it's too high, but also decreasing back to what it was before but the media acts like it's still at 700 per year. The city will be under 600 this year too, which is still too high, but 2016 and 2017 are severe outliers in the last 15 years. This year will end up also as an outlier, but not by a ton. It's trending overall in the correct way. Hopefully next year has a similar decrease

[SIGSEGV]

I don't see anyone saying the murder rate is acceptable. What people are saying is that the threat of violence to someone in their situation (presumably not in a gang or associated with gangsters or in a neighborhood with lots of shootings) is much lower than out-of-towners think.

[UPChicago]

My response was prompted by the "highly segregated" comment but I am speaking in more general terms than specifically to any particular post. Generally, it seems people tend to make excuses for the number of murders rather than accepting that it's unacceptable.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by UPChicago

My response was prompted by the "highly segregated" comment but I am speaking in more general terms than specifically to any particular post. Generally, it seems people tend to make excuses for the number of murders rather than accepting that it's unacceptable.

I only half agree with that. I think the segregation comment is a response to people attacking Chicago saying it's all dangerous when its actually not. Also, these things are important to point out when trying to figure out the causes. If you cannot understand the communities this happens in and understand what's going on in them versus other areas, then you will not truly understand how to actually fix this.

[UPChicago]

Originally Posted by marothisu

I only half agree with that. I think the segregation comment is a response to people attacking Chicago saying it's all dangerous when its actually not. Also, these things are important to point out when trying to figure out the causes. If you cannot understand the communities this happens in and understand what's going on in them versus other areas, then you will not truly understand how to actually fix this.

I completely understand the reasoning behind using that particular excuse to dispell the stereotype of crime. I think it gets really easy to use that as a cop out especially if you live in an area of the city unaffected by crime but we should all view it as our problem. As my fellow Illini stated, the only thing that would change people's perspective of Chicago on this matter would be for Chicago to address its crime problem. I also should state, I don't think anyone has negative intentions when they try to defend Chicago in this way either.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by UPChicago

As IrishIllini stated, the only thing that would change people's perspective of Chicago on this matter, would be for Chicago to address its crime problem.

i think that kinda cuts right to the heart of the matter.

chicago's violent crime problem is overwhelmingly focused on a specific racial/socio-economic group (poor blacks), and for those of us not in that group i think there's a big giant gaping hole of not having a single fucking clue as to what needs to be done "for chicago to address its crime problem".

i think everyone in this city is rightly disgusted by chicago atrocious and persistent levels of gun violence (stretching back over a half century now), but at the same time i think there's also a lot of "fuck if i know what hell should be done about it", you know what i mean?

[UPChicago]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i think that kinda cuts right to the heart of the matter.

chicago's violent crime problem is overwhelmingly focused on a specific racial/socio-economic group (poor blacks), and for those of us not in that group i think there's a big giant gaping hole of not having a single fucking clue as to what needs to be done "for chicago to address its crime problem".

i think everyone in this city is rightly disgusted by chicago atrocious and persistent levels of gun violence (stretching back over a half century now), but at the same time i think there's also a lot of "fuck if i know what hell should be done about it", you know what i mean?

Absolutely agree with you, but I think the issue is that there has been no discernible effort by City leadership to even attempt to understand the problem. I don't think it is a foregone conclusion that certain areas of the City are destined to be crime-ridden, it takes efforts by the government to try to ameliorate the problem and that is where I believe we are lacking.

[SIGSEGV]

I mean the obvious solution is to ban handguns nationwide, that makes a bunch of rednecks feel emasculated so it won't happen any time soon.

[Kenmore]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i think everyone in this city is rightly disgusted by chicago atrocious and persistent levels of gun violence (stretching back over a half century now), but at the same time i think there's also a lot of "fuck if i know what hell should be done about it", you know what i mean?

less guns, more jobs, stop closing schools and mental health clinics

this isn't that hard

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

less guns, more jobs, stop closing schools and mental health clinics

this isn't that hard

Agreed for the most part on the concepts though how do you get more jobs? Less guns?

Closing half empty is not a problem, it's a rational move. CPS has lost about 30,000 students in the last 3 years, not a single school was closed in that time, how long do we keep vacant buildings open?

I assume you are referring to city run healthcare. City's should not be in the healthcare business, certainly not Chicago, which has trouble filling potholes.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

less guns, more jobs, stop closing schools and mental health clinics

this isn't that hard

it actually IS hard, that's why none of those things have happened.

guns: even if illinois outlawed guns altogether this afternoon, indiana and all of its shady gun dealers are still only a 20 minute drive away.

jobs: this one seems wildly disingenuous on your part. you were shitting all over amazon for considering chicago as a place to plant tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. if you're talking about "guy with a GED making $35/hour on the line at a union plant" type of jobs then you can forget it. those jobs went to mexico, china, and robots, and they're not coming back.

schools: keeping schools that are 75% under-enrolled open is a completely irresponsible waste of tax dollars.

mental health clinics: i would agree that mental health is critically important, particularly for those less fortunate, but i'm not sure how more mental health clinics would fix chicago's gang culture.

[LouisVanDerWright]

They did just pass a referendum to open a mental health clinic on the NW side and make us all pay for it by yet another special fee on my tax bill. I'd rather they do that than raise my taxes so they can send it to some retiree in Phoenix.

[marothisu]

It's good when your taxes actually go to something good...

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

schools: keeping schools that are 75% under-enrolled open is a completely irresponsible waste of tax dollars.

Most of the low-hanging fruit re:school closings has already taken place, and South/West Side communities seem to have adapted with the help of Safe Passage and other efforts, so the negative effects are very overblown by liberals who are predisposed to support any and all school funding.

But I'd also argue that the school closures have had little or no positive effect on childrens' education, either. The schools remaining open probably have larger class sizes and the teachers have even more kids to teach. Any budget savings from the closures just got dumped into the giant gaping pit of pension obligations, instead of giving teachers more resources and cleaner, healthier schools to teach in.

Educating poor urban youth is a problem that nobody really has the answer to, and not for lack of trying. I'm left to wonder whether the school system can really address these problems at all, or if we need to start looking at policies that change the home environment. Something like a state-run system of boarding schools that parents could opt into for a nominal tuition.

[Baronvonellis]

Yea, they need military style boarding schools! I saw a 60 minutes episode about the SEED school in DC that parents get on a waiting list to get there kids into. It's mostly poor black and Hispanic families that want it, and it works wonders. High graduation rates and most of the kids go to college.
The parents fail these kids so they need discipline and structure that their parents can't provide.

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

less guns, more jobs, stop closing schools and mental health clinics

this isn't that hard

On the matter of schools and mental health clinics, that’s become one of the go-to explanations for the huge spike in gun violence despite the fact that there is no evidence to support it. This report by the UChicago Crime Lab explicitly dismisses the theory.

https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/attac...icago+2016.pdf

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Educating poor urban youth is a problem that nobody really has the answer to, and not for lack of trying.

yep. my wife has been involved with inner city education her entire career, first as a teacher in north lawndale, then englewood, and then auburn-gresham, and currently as the director of math instruction for a nationwide school consulting agency that specifically works with struggling inner city schools.

she's been giving it her all for the past 20 years because she feels very strongly about the inherent unfairness of US public education, but even she gets pessimistic about it at times when she looks back at all of the hard work that's put in and the very poor results to show for it.

as she'll admit in her more despondent moments, "we don't exactly have an education problem in this nation, what we really have is a family problem, or rather, a lack-of-family problem. it's asking an awful lot of schools to somehow fix it all when the root of the problem is much deeper."

[BorisMolotov]

Education starts at home with commitment from parents/guardians. When there is no help on that end (for a myriad of reasons) children are doomed from the start. I'm just not sure we can really do anything about that currently without starting to get into unethical territory.