Gun violence causes more than 500 deaths a year in Chicago, yet never loses its power to shock. Every life lost, every new story or statistic, jolts the city anew. Fifty or more people gunned down in a single weekend. Four or five victims hit at a time. A woman shot dead in broad daylight while holding her 1-year-old daughter.
On Memorial Day weekend, newly sworn Mayor Lori Lightfoot put 1,200 extra officers on the street and kept a high profile herself. Yet dozens of people were shot. Now the next summer holiday is here. Count on a gut punch: Maybe a young person visiting cousins for the weekend. A bystander on a porch or even inside a home. Some folks at a cookout. All normal, until the gunfire.
Often it’s teenage boys and young men shot in Chicago. Not always. Katrice Stringer Haywood was hit while walking to a bus stop in May after work at a school cafeteria. “I’m shot,” she told her husband by phone. She was dead by the time he got to the scene. She was 37, with a 13-year-old son. Candice Dickerson, 36, was in a cellphone store with two of her young children in April when a random bullet pierced a window, struck her in the face and killed her.
Twenty-six women have been fatally shot in Chicago so far this year, more than in each of the past five years, report Jeremy Gorner and William Lee in the Tribune. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson says most of these women don’t have criminal histories and aren’t being targeted, although some may associate with gang members and be close by when gunfire strikes. Others are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Is crime on mean streets just getting meaner? Tamar Manasseh, founder of a Chicago group, Mothers Against Senseless Killings, has a different take: that despair makes young men not homicidal, but suicidal. “‘I don’t want to kill myself, so I’m going to kill you,'” she says. “‘And then I know (your group) will come back and kill me. So I don’t have to put the gun in my mouth and kill myself.’ Where they live leaves them no options. … If you have no prospects, how do you continue to get up every morning for 50 years living in that?”
To these men and boys: Chicago wants you and needs you. This city owes you the best possible opportunity to heal and to begin to build better for the next generation. You deserve all of what America promises as it celebrates its independence — a chance to pursue your dreams, contribute to your family and neighborhood, and reap the rewards of a life well-lived. People in politics, policing, education and social services want to help you step closer to this ideal.
To Chicagoans who live in areas touched by violence, fear or just too much disheartening news and too little investment: The city owes you better too. You should be kept safe from indiscriminate killing and illegal weapons, period.
Overall, shootings in Chicago are down from an especially violent 2016. Efforts in the Austin district show a glimmer of hope: Homicides are down 30% over this time last year, an improvement attributed to the confiscation of thousands of illegal guns, use of ShotSpotter and other technology, visible law-enforcement officers, deep investigations and work by community groups. Stories like this provide some encouragement against what can seem like intractable problems.
More immediately, Chicago confronts another warm holiday weekend. The mayor called the Memorial Day weekend tally “an unacceptable state of affairs.” She was taken aback by the stream of shooting alerts she received. “I certainly knew that before, but to see it graphically depicted is quite shocking and says that we’ve got a long way to go as a city,” she said.
Chicago can’t let that sense of shock subside until the violence does. Be safe.
Editorials reflect the opinion of the Editorial Board, as determined by the members of the board, the editorial page editor and the publisher.
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