In every serious national discussion about racist police violence and armed mass shooters, conservatives consistently bring up the epidemic of gun violence in inner city black and brown neighborhoods. They never bring up this issue in earnestness, to discuss its roots and solutions, but as a deflection. Even a few black cultural icons (not activists, notably) repeat this same fallacy. Gun violence in South Side Chicago, they say with revelry, kills far more black people than police violence.
When we do look closer at the gun violence that is truly tragic and deadly, we see that it is intrinsically tied to police violence, over-policing, over-incarceration and systemic de-funding of those neighborhoods. If we were to truly treat this issue with seriousness and pursue available, effective solutions, we see that it is discriminatory economic and social policies that create these conditions. We would also see that the same racist policing that kills unarmed black men is a core cause of this gang-related violence, not a solution.
This summer is already shaping up to be the deadliest in Chicago in years. Murders have increased by over 30% and shootings by almost 50%, the worst rates of violence in the city since 2016. Tragically these deaths have included children, toddlers and infants caught in the crossfire. The violence only exacerbates the ongoing pandemic that has disproportionately hit Black and Latinx communities in Chicago, on top of the economic suffering of a shut-down with minimal if any economic support.
This violence continues in spite of increased police presence and spending in these neighborhoods. The establishment of a police operated response center did not stop gun violence from increasing the following month. That is also in spite of a 7% budget increase that brought the city’s CPD funding to $1.8 billion for this year. And while Chicago Public Schools continues to shut down and consolidate dozens of schools in these neighborhoods, they are also upholding a contract to pay CPD $33 million for school safety officers.
With one of the highest police budgets in the country, along with some of the most notorious cases of police violence, along with rising gun violence in the city, it’s necessary to ask what all this spending on police is producing. Chicago’s homicide clearance rate, the number of murder cases solved, is well below the national average. Last year it shot up to 53%, but hundreds of those cases were cleared without arrests. And it is even worse when we specify it to black and Hispanic neighborhoods, where the clearance rates are 22% and 33% respectively. This shows that even in the most notoriously violent neighborhoods, police are failing to solve or prevent violent crime.
However that has not stopped them from making arrests in those neighborhoods. In 2018 73% of all arrests made in Chicago were of Black residents despite them making up only 30% of Chicago residents. That means Black Chicagoans are six times more likely to be arrested than white residents, but are half as likely to have their murderers arrested or convicted. The large majority of those arrests are made for non-violent crimes and misdemeanors.
A common refrain in response to the abysmal homicide clearance rate in Black neighborhoods is that those residents don’t talk to police. That is true, and born out of a fundamental mistrust of police in their community. The majority of arrests, police shootings, police use of force and stops are made in those neighborhoods. Yet they are slow to respond to calls when they are needed. The Marshall Project also revealed that the CPD officers concentrated in high-crime neighborhoods are also the most inexperienced, and therefore have higher rates of misconduct.
The fact is that it is police presence and actions themselves that lead to distrust in the community, therefore little to no justice for victims of gun violence. But it is also the high arrest rate of Black residents, whether on the streets, taking the train or even while at school, that create an environment for high crime and violence. When anybody is arrested or convicted of a crime, Black people especially, they are subjected to economic discrimination for life. They have trouble getting a job with a criminal record, or become ineligible for public housing or student loans. This not only affects them, but their family. Even a weekend in a holding cell without charges can lead to job loss for many who can’t afford bail.
And when students, who often rely on school to be a safe haven from violence and hunger, are put in the incarceration system early, they are denied education and more likely to resort to crime. For children and adults alike, prison or juvenile detention is often a pipeline into gangs, because they must rely on incarcerated gang members to survive abusive prison conditions. Many Black Americans who are not career or habitual criminals who go to jail are pushed into a life a recidivism. The very act of over-policing denies economic opportunity, which creates an environment for crime and violence.
The issues of local gun violence and systemic police violence are not discreet, and the latter is certainly not an answer to the former, but they are intertwined. Along with a history of economic subjugation and political disenfranchisement, these are the factors that create the deadly summers of Chicago. Clearly the city, and cities like it all over the country, must take a new approach to ending urban violence. Something must be done. Many activists are calling for these police departments to be de-funded and abolished, but that alone cannot address these environments of violence.
Some of the most progressive solutions to urban violence include police playing a central role. However, it is not one of strict punishment, or prevention of violence through incarceration, which we have seen backfire every time. Instead they utilize police officers as outreach. This means employing officers who are from the neighborhoods they work in, who build relationships with the residents and can be trusted as a resource, either for protection or assistance. By coupling this kind of police force with non-profit and public organizations that perform aggressive outreach to at-risk youth, police can much more effectively prevent shootings without involving the criminal justice system. In his book Bleeding Out, Thomas Abt shows how initiatives like this have worked to curb violence in neighborhoods like Oakland. It meets communities on their levels, at their needs. It gets to would-be shooters with outreach, and arrests confirmed shooters through community trust.
Those initiatives are only part of the solution, and the easy part. As Abt points out in the beginning of the book, it stops the bleeding before these neighborhoods bleed out completely. But to address the source of the problem there must be more fundamental, and expensive changes. This is often explained as the reasoning behind de-funding the police. In the long run, investment in education, economic opportunity and mental health resources are much more successful at solving gun violence than any criminal justice approach.
When children are in school, they cannot be caught in the crossfire on the streets. When they are doing homework at home they cannot be bothered by gang members or police. But moreover, when there are mental health resources to provide therapy and group counseling, those children are more likely to confront their trauma with dialogue than with violence. Those disputes are settled with words rather than guns. Study after study has shown that crime, and violent crime in particular, go down when there are publicly available mental health resources.
These resources in mental health policy and education become even more vital when communities are subjected the the trauma of constant violence and grief. Violence is a coping mechanism for trauma. When children are shot and killed in their homes every day in your neighborhood, you live with that trauma. It creates health risks, shortens life-spans and takes attention away from education or career work. Policing only adds to that trauma and stress, and therefore prevents any sort of avenue away from the violence. We cannot arrest away the problem of gun violence in Chicago. We never have before and an ever-inflating budget won’t change that. We can, however, if we wanted to, cure it.
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