Filed under: article | Tags: deaths, england, knives, new york times, teenagers, violence
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Good read from today’s New York Times on the alarming number of young people falling victim to knife violence.
Tidbits:
Knife crime, most often involving weapons like simple kitchen knives, has dominated the headlines in recent weeks, with reports of fresh cases every day. But statistically, the picture is more murky. Violent crime over all has actually decreased by 41 percent from a peak in 1995, according to the British Crime Survey, in which citizens report their exposure to crime.
Yet the survey accounts only for people 16 and older, and evidence suggests that young people in poorer areas are increasingly likely to carry knives, and increasingly likely to use them. The Daily Telegraph, which examined data from three-fourths of the police forces in England and Wales, reported recently that nearly 21,000 people had been stabbed or mugged at knifepoint so far this year.
Here’s an article focusing on the rise of UK hospital admissions for violence, which is mentioned in the New York Times article.
(Luis Torres / Diario de Juarez)
Here is an interesting article on the consequences of the ongoing drug war in Mexico. It looks like the problems we see here aren’t confined to our own backyard.
Filed under: article, gangs | Tags: chicago defender, child soldiers, children, gangs, parents
Opacity.us
The Chicago Defender recently published a compelling cover story about one mother’s struggle to protect her son from the influence of gangs in their neighborhood. The boy, who is only 10 and learns at a slower pace than other children at his school, is the type of child gang members look for when taking in new recruits. Sadly, this same story is found not only in neighborhoods across Chicago, but in cities across the U.S. Situations like this are no different than the stories we read of children forced to become soldiers in places we consider a world away from ours.
Filed under: article, chicago, violence | Tags: chicago, crime, homicide, memphis, public housing, the atlantic
Thanks, Human Goods, for the heads up on this story.
The July/August edition of The Atlantic takes a look the recent rise in violence across the country, focusing on the movement of crime in Memphis, Tennessee. In less than 10 years, Memphis has seen a rise in crime in areas long deemed “safe” or upwardly mobile. Experts pointed to the closing of public housing complexes and migration of its residents as a possible factor, since crime in the areas that housed the complexes has declined.
Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.” The leaders of the group, which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs, theorized about what might be spurring the latest crime wave: the spread of gangs, the masses of offenders coming out of prison, methamphetamines. But mostly they puzzled over the bleak new landscape. According to FBI data, America’s most dangerous spots are now places where Martin Scorsese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence, South Carolina; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Reading, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee.
Memphis has always been associated with some amount of violence. But why has Elvis’s hometown turned into America’s new South Bronx? Barnes thinks he knows one big part of the answer, as does the city’s chief of police. A handful of local criminologists and social scientists think they can explain it, too. But it’s a dismal answer, one that city leaders have made clear they don’t want to hear. It’s an answer that offers up racial stereotypes to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial tensions. Ultimately, it reaches beyond crime and implicates one of the most ambitious antipoverty programs of recent decades.
If this issue seems familiar to Chicagoans, it should. This has been a source of debate as Chicago public housing buildings are being torn down and its residents sent to neighborhoods just as violent or more violent than the ones they left behind. Medill colleague Erin Halasz recently wrote about this very issue, finding that the decline in murders this past decade has skipped a number of Chicago neighborhoods, or moved to neighborhoods that did not see such violence in the past. The following chart examines homicides in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood (which housed the notorious Robert Taylor homes) and Greater Grand Crossing and Washington Park, just two miles south of Grand Boulevard.
Erin Halasz/Medill
The next question in this murder mystery is how much of this violence has moved farther into the suburbs surrounding Chicago. While homicide numbers for the city of Chicago are easy to find, I’ve had a harder time finding something on homicides in the Chicago metropolitan area. If anybody has any leads on this, feel free to write. If not, investigation time it shall be.
Filed under: article, chicago, violence | Tags: chiago tribune, francis oduru, ghana, murder, student, truman college, violence
Francis Oduro (Chicago Tribune)
A native of Ghana, Francis Oduro came to America 18 months ago to study engineering. Sadly, instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he became another victim of gun violence that has taken too many lives this year.
Oduro was shot and killed Wednesday, one block from Truman College where he had been attending for the past year. Police believe another man, who was shot at the scene, was the intended victim, calling the shooting gang related.
His parents said that Oduro wanted to find a city less violent than Chicago after finishing school. Unfortunately, he won’t get that chance. More unfortunate, one less person is gone who might have decided to stay here and help make things at least a little better in their community. The Violence Project’s thoughts and prayers go out to the Oduro family.
Filed under: article, schools, teenagers, violence | Tags: chicago, college, cps, engelwood, medill, violence
This week marks a week since the murder of student Marcus Greer. Why is this notable? Because that means a CPS student has died in a month. This has been something left out of the wall-to-wall coverage the rise in violence has been receiving lately. Although it is a small accomplishment, it is one worth noting. It will be small victories like this that lead us on the way to taking back communities and bringing about real change.
On that note, I wanted to spotlight more positive acts local teens doing. Joshua Pollock recently wrote about John Hope High School senior LaTreal Peterson. Peterson was recently a recognized as a Gates Millenium Scholar and plans to attend the University of Wisconsin Madison in the fall to study business. He sees providing more opportunities for young people in their schools and communities as a way of curbing violence.
Filed under: Miscellaneous, article, event, organizaion, research, teenagers, violence | Tags: career, fair, malcolm x college, poetry, slam, spoken word, tap roots, violence
Courtesy of MySpace
I wanted to share with readers the spoken word poetry of Tap Roots, Inc. They are a West Side group who performs for students, offering an uplifting, positive message that they hope will spark the minds of at least one child in the audience. Recently, they performed for public school students at the 10th annual Citywide Health Careers Fair. The following piece was dedicated to the parents of young victims of violence and the victims themselves.
Filed under: article, chicago, legislation & initiatives | Tags: chicago, child abuse, cook county, funding, illinois, legislature, medill, tom dart
More funding is needed to assist the estimated 1,100 abused and neglected children who are at risk of growing up to be violent criminals, a group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Illinois said Tuesday. It recommended an increase in home-visiting programs to assist 28,000 children in the state who are victims of abuse annually.
Filed under: Miscellaneous, article, chicago, legislation & initiatives, organizaion, teenagers, violence | Tags: cbs, chicago, gangs, jesse jackson, jesse jackson jr, kennedy king, michael pfleger, poverty, rufus williams, schools, town hall, violence, wbbm
Disappointment cannot describe the feeling I had watching the CBS 2 Chicago/WBBM radio town hall on violence in Chicago. It has been literally a minute since it went off the air, but I couldn’t wait until the next day to write about this. Here you had two of the largest media outlets in Chicago giving light on a hotly debated subject, and they drop the ball. How did they drop ball you ask? With panelists and speakers ranging from Jesse Jackson, school board president Rufus Williams, Congressmen Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Danny Davis, police superintendent Jody Weis, Rev. Michael Pfleger and parents of murdered CPS students, what or who possibly could have been left out?
The youth
The youth
The youth
Two hours of rhetoric, grandstanding, insight, and ideas about what is wrong with young people today, how can they be saved, why are so many at risk, but not one youth is given the chance to speak on their own behalf. The irony of this is that right outside Kennedy King College, where the town hall took place, you will find young people between 55th and 79th & Halsted breaking curfew, hanging out on the streets. For every youth out there who are gang banging, dropping out of school, or dying, there are many more trying to do something with their lives and able to offer as much — sometimes more– insight than the leaders who continue to speak on our behalf. Each time the camera cut into the audience, I scanned it to find at least one young face but could see a person who looked like they were under 25.
Despite popular belief, young people have to something to say. They always have. We just don’t listen. We put up the wall at the first difficulty and conclude that they’re “different” or “not how they used to be back in my day.” But as a recently vilified pastor once said, “different does not mean detrimental.”
Besides ignoring the young people, regular community residents were left out of this talk. I’m talking about the residents who aren’t part of an organization. If we’re going to open up this debate, we need to knock down the doors and let everybody in. Forget about the cameras. Forget about the lights. Forget about the ad sponsors. And, hopefully, Mayor Daley can take part too.
In fact, here is my idea for a town hall: Mayor Daley and these same leaders go on a citywide tour of community centers, high school gyms and auditoriums , churches, etc. — maybe even Soldier Field if the demand is there– and open the doors to everybody in the communities. When I say everybody, I mean everybody. Community groups, youth, parents, gang bangers, addicts, the homeless, the tired, the rich, the poor and the huddled masses. Open the gates and just have at it for as long as everyone is willing. Find out why these kids are dropping out? Why are the gang bangers joining gangs? Why are addicts doing drugs? Why have some people stopped caring? We don’t have to worry about commercial breaks or interrupting CSI: Miami and Criminal Minds.
If there was one person at the town hall who brought this point home, it was teacher and lecturer Dr. Adolph Brown, III. Brown walked around the room until the very end disguised as the stereotypical young male many are used to envisioning: doo-rag and baggy clothes. Brown encountered only stern looks and silence from most of those in attendance, not an ounce of outreach or gratefulness for this disguised young person making the effort to attend this forum. As Brown revealed his suit and true identity under the baggy clothes, the audience was left silent and befuddled from their hypocrisy. After two hours of talk, Brown challenged them to action.
Will they answer his call? We’ll see at the next town hall.
Filed under: article, chicago, legislation & initiatives, organizaion | Tags: bill, blagojevich, cabrini green, ceasefire, chicago, daley, funding, illinois, initiative, jobs, medill, northwestern, violence
I wanted to use this post to single out some of the excellent reporting my fellow Medill colleagues have been doing this week on issues related to this blog.
On Tuesday, Erin Halasz wrote about Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s proposed $150 million initiative that would invest in community development and summer jobs for young people in low-income communities. The money would be broken down in the following ways:
- $30 million to create jobs for up to 20,000 teens and young adults
- $20 million for after-school programs in high-crime areas
- $50 million in grant money for organizations that help put people to work or redevelop high-crime areas
- $40 million for local community development groups, financial institutions, venture enterprises and businesses or communities that can demonstrate immediate job growth from their projects
- $10 million in grant money for local police departments to purchase equipment
While the plan sounds good on paper, doubts are still in the air, given the govenor’s track record of political grandstanding and not being able to come through on his promises. The financial troubles of the state are also worth considering. Mayor Daley, who last week announced his plan for youth summer jobs during his State of the City address, made his own doubts public regarding the governor’s plan.
Another angle on the governor’s proposal was followed up the next day by Josh Pollock. He looked at one of the groups that, surprisingly, was left out of the gov’s new funding: CeaseFire. In a year, CeaseFire has seen its locations shrink from 25 to only four, despite many successes. The sharp reduction in operations is due to state funding that was discontinued. CeaseFire now receives its money mainly from the Department of Justice and private organizations.
Today, Chloe Wiley covered a local organization near the Cabrini Green housing development that reaches out to give local kids an alternative to the streets. The Alliance for Community Peace is a faith-based organization that states in its mission:
seeks to improve academic performance and school attendance of students; to provide opportunities for demonstrating postive social skills,interactions, and relationships through educational, recreational, cultural, and other program activities, to adopt positive decision making skills that discourage negative risk taking behaviors through life skills application; and to develop meaningful work experiences leading to career and vocational fulfillment for students, adults, and families.
Big propos to all three for peeling the layers off this onion and doing the work many in our field still won’t do.
