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Chicago Tribune
25-04-2025
- Chicago Tribune
David Greising: The flaws in Chicago's throw-everything-at-it approach to crime
Nearly a month after a 14-year-old allegedly shot a 15-year-old during a 'teen takeover' in Streeterville, Chicago police last weekend were determined not to let the teens take over Streeterville again. They deployed tactics both analog and digital. The digital approach involved 'geo-fencing' the neighborhood, east of Michigan Avenue and just north of the Chicago River, so no ride-share services would pick up or drop off in the targeted zone. One analog tactic involved erecting crowd-control fencing overnight Thursday that was removed Friday morning — well before the expected teen takeover could even take place. Chicago police still have not explained the mystery behind the up-and-down barricades. Police working in groups patrolled Streeterville by foot. Officers also roamed the neighborhood in cars and transport vehicles. The visible and invisible defense measures evidently had their intended effect: A measure of peace reigned for the weekend — though the intense presence of police unsettled some residents. Point made by the Chicago Police Department: An all-hands-on-deck response evidently can inoculate one neighborhood, for one weekend. There was even no need for an earlier curfew, an idea pushed by Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd. Even so, such a response could not be sustainable over time, much less scalable to cover neighborhoods citywide. The Streeterville case study was on my mind this week as I read a new book by Jens Ludwig, co-founder of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. 'Unforgiving Places,' which the Tribune excerpted two Sundays ago in the opinion section, is a primer on the roots of handgun violence in Chicago and other cities — as well as the mixed results from tactics intended to help address the urban bloodletting. Shootings are down in Chicago from their recent peak in 2021 — as reported by the Chicago Police Department, the 102 homicides this year through April 13 are down nearly 40% from 2021, and nonfatal shootings are down nearly 55%. Violent crime is down nationally since 2021. And Chicago's decline also coincides with a laudable citywide response to a surge that peaked that year: more than $200 million committed by the city, state and private sector to violence-intervention measures; an anti-violence strategy developed by police Superintendent Larry Snelling; and block-by-block activity by crime interrupters, neighborhood watch groups and others who bravely wrestle with the problem in the streets. Ambitious as all those measures are, though, the fact remains that Chicago still suffers from a far higher rate of violent crime per capita than either New York or Los Angeles — two urban centers with challenges not unlike Chicago's. In a sense, the chaotically choreographed show of force in Streeterville last weekend might serve as a metaphor for the state of the current response to Chicago's crime wave. There is a certain throw-everything-at-it aspect to the efforts to curb violent crime. Each measure is laudable, but they can lack coordination, are not always driven by reliable data and need to be undertaken more strategically than have been managed to date. At the heart of the challenge, as described by Ludwig, is the nature of violent crime itself. Common explanations for the causes of handgun violence — from 'super predators' and gang turf wars to retribution for past violence — all play some role. But those pathologies do not begin to explain the root causes of the problem. Getting to the causes starts with understanding how human nature factors in. The preponderance of shootings, Ludwig finds, result from impetuous, unplanned, almost reflexive responses by young people, mostly men, to the hostile environments they live in. In those unforgiving places, a single misstep can lead to violence and death. Especially in neighborhoods where young people commonly carry guns, a cross look from a stranger, a grudge carried into a street party or a challenge to a young person's pride can lead to what Ludwig and some social scientists have identified as the 10 minutes of a person's life that can lead to death for the victim — and a life-altering prison term for the assailant. A variety of crime-reduction tactics have worked, and nearly as many rational-sounding approaches have failed. Zero-tolerance policing often backfires, Ludwig writes. But the 'pocket parks' some cities use to replace vacant lots almost always reduce crime, data shows. To make his assessments, Ludwig uses behavioral economics, a field of study that seeks to determine the psychological reasons people make irrational decisions. He points out areas in which behavioral economics conflict with commonsense assumptions about crime: Police activity aimed at preventing violence is more effective than making arrests after a shooting; data does not establish a direct correlation between job creation and violence reduction; letters of apology and other restorative justice tactics effectively prevent subsequent violent acts. Perhaps Ludwig's most telling finding is his comparison of adjacent South Side neighborhoods separated by Dorchester Avenue — Greater Grand Crossing to the west, with one of the highest homicide rates in the city, and South Shore to the east, where the rate of violent crime is about half as high. The people living in the two neighborhoods have much in common. Household incomes are virtually identical, for example. The big difference: The concentration of housing and businesses in South Shore is higher than in Grand Crossing. There are more eyes on the street, more human activity, which creates social cues that prompt people to restrain impulses that lead to violent crime. Ludwig offers no magic wand to cure Chicago's violent crime problems. But his book makes clear that human connection, human interaction and the development of a sense of community could be among the most successful antidotes — and a good place to start. David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
Chicago Tribune
13-04-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Jens Ludwig: The unforgiving origins of Chicago gun violence
Editor's note: Regular Tribune Opinion contributor Jens Ludwig, Pritzker director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, has a new book, 'Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence,' to be published April 21 by the University of Chicago Press. In this exclusive, lightly edited extract from Chapter One, Ludwig explores what caused three lives of young Chicagoans to change forever. It was at 69th and Calumet at 10 p.m. on Halloween Eve, 1996, when Brian Willis, age 18, was arguing with Alexander Clair, 23, about a used beige two-door Ford LTD parked in front of Little Hobo's restaurant. Clair had sold Willis the car a few days earlier and complained that Willis hadn't paid for it yet. Willis was angry that Clair had reportedly entered the car earlier that night and tried to take it back. Regarding payment, Willis told Clair, 'I'm not going to give you shit.' Regarding adherence to the transaction's terms, Clair replied, 'If I catch you in the car — if I see the car or I catch you in the car — I'm going to burn the car up.' The two argued in the street for another 10 minutes. Eventually, Willis broke off and ran across 69th, past the car and behind the building at 352 E. 69th St. Clair followed. Meanwhile Clair's girlfriend, Jewel Washington, 25, was trailing behind when she heard two loud gunshots. Those would turn out to be the gunshots that killed Clair, fired from a short-handled, 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with one shotgun blast to Clair's stomach and one to his head. … Willis was later convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In effect, three lives, not just two, were lost that night. The two conventional wisdoms For most Americans, the tragedy at 69th and Calumet in Greater Grand Crossing can be explained in one of two ways. The first is that shootings like this one stem from characterologically bad people. Whether born bad or raised badly, the perpetrators of gun violence in this view have no moral compass or fear of the justice system. 'I cannot say it any clearer — it is the good guys against the bad guys. These bad guys are violent, they carry guns, and the symbol of our public safety, which is that police uniform, they have total disregard for.' That's from the mayor of New York City. These narratives of 'bad guys' or 'wicked people' are usually accompanied by calls for greater vigilance: for the government to deter or incapacitate criminals by putting more police on the streets; for the building and filling of more prisons; for private citizens to protect themselves by arming themselves. A second perspective is that gun violence stems from root causes — that is, from a set of social conditions that fuel gun violence. In this view, violence grows where human flourishing doesn't. 'Violence is an expression of poverty' is how a recent mayor of Chicago put it. This narrative often leads to calls to fundamentally transform American society: to desegregate our cities; to end the social isolation of the most vulnerable; to take greater steps to end poverty; to dismantle the prison-industrial complex; to defund the police and the military and channel those resources back into social programs instead. The data confirms that most Americans believe that crime and violence are due to some version of one of these two conventional wisdoms. In focus groups, Americans say crime is due to 'something inherently wrong within the lawbreaker, such as lack of moral fiber, or due to ecological considerations that influence or force individuals to break the law, such as lack of money.' We see the same thing in surveys. In 1994, around the time President Bill Clinton signed the largest crime bill in U.S. history, seven of 10 Americans were telling Gallup pollsters that crime was due to amoral criminals and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop them. The next, most common explanation was poverty. Of course, these aren't literally the only ideas out there. But they're clearly the ones driving the conversation. It's not just policymakers and members of the general public who believe these conventional wisdoms. They're what I, the person who studies crime for a living, long believed, too. I grew up reading about Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy and the Son of Sam killings in Time and, later, in books like 'In Cold Blood' and 'Helter Skelter' — violence committed by predators and lunatics. Later, as an economics major in college, I read University of Chicago economist Gary Becker's argument that criminals are rational actors responding to incentives — that crime is a kind of market response to other, less good options. I was also reading the biographies of people like Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, which was to read the stories of lives lost to the violence epidemic, the root causes of which these men were trying to stamp out. These two coexisting schools of conventional wisdom about what causes violence aren't just entrenched; they're unavoidable. And there is indeed some truth to both ideas. There are bad people in the world. These are people who lack empathy, are narcissists with a grandiose view of themselves, are pathological liars, have a constant need for stimulation, are manipulative, fail to feel remorse or guilt, and refuse to take responsibility for anything. Many of them show signs of problem behavior in their early years and then engage in antisocial or violent behavior for most of their lives. Some estimates suggest that perhaps 1% of all men in America fall into this group. They can be found in every walk of life: on the street corner, in a police car, teaching in a university classroom, at an investment bank or church, in a Boy Scout troop, or sometimes even in the very highest of political offices. An outsized share of these individuals wind up in prison, although most people who are incarcerated are not in this category. Psychiatrists call them psychopaths. There is also evidence that the threat of punishment can indeed deter some criminal behaviors. We know this from studying what social scientists call natural experiments, changes out in the world that manipulate policies in a nearly random way akin to the sort of randomized controlled trial that provides gold-standard evidence in medicine. Consider the 2006 mass pardon in Italy, in which 40% of all inmates in the country were released from prison all at once. Their release came with a condition: If rearrested, people would have to serve out the remainder of their original sentence. The released prisoners varied greatly in how much time they had left on their original sentence (from one to 36 months), depending on the luck of the draw as to how far into their prison sentence they were when the pardon was issued. Thus, similar 'types' of people were released facing different punishment levels for committing exactly the same crime. The data showed that those who were facing stiffer penalties engaged in less violence. Meanwhile, the people who believe violence is borne of the persistent unfairnesses of American society, including its inequality, discrimination and segregation, are also right. Turn on the news and see where the violence happens; it's rarely in the fancy neighborhoods. This phenomenon is neither recent nor limited to the American context: Wherever groups of people are treated as less-than by a society, crime often follows. … The root causes of violence, in other words, stem from both economic disadvantage and social disadvantage, including racial and ethnic discrimination. What do the consequences of this disadvantage and discrimination look like in modern-day America? They look like the five Chicago neighborhoods that together account for fewer than 1 in 10 city residents but experience fully 1 in 3 of the city's homicides. It's no accident that these neighborhoods are located in the most disadvantaged, socially isolated, racially segregated, predominantly Black areas of Chicago's South and West sides. In the U.S. as a whole, Black Americans are 13% of all residents but 27% of all victims of police shootings, 33% of all prison inmates, 33% of those arrested for violent crimes and 54% of all murder victims. The limits of conventional wisdom The conventional wisdoms that gun violence is caused by either bad people or bad economic opportunities have produced no shortage of policy proposals. The history of these policies illustrates the limits of how we've traditionally characterized the problem and its solutions. 'Get tough' policies (enforcement, imprisonment, public vigilance) have helped improve safety to a degree but only by imposing tremendous harm along the way. For example, the data shows that imprisonment can reduce violence. But the growth in American prisons in the 1970s, and the harms that prisons impose on incarcerated people's health, families and livelihoods, occurred at a rate that had no historical or international precedent. The growth in police spending has helped reduce violent crime, but the frequent gravitation toward 'zero-tolerance' policing has generated substantial human costs as well. The decisions of private citizens to arm themselves has contributed to a flood of gun stores and used guns that make firearms more likely to wind up being used in crimes. All these harms are disproportionately concentrated in the same disadvantaged, segregated communities that suffer the most from gun violence itself. Meanwhile, reforms meant to stem the root causes of violence — attempts at fixing society's most complicated challenges through policy change — typically run aground when their political proponents reach office. Diminishing political and social returns — ideas that start from good intentions only to end in frustration and disillusion — seem to plague most attempts at addressing America's structural problems, which remain and persist. While poverty in America has decreased by some measures, inequality in both income and wealth has increased. In Chicago, the city's challenge with gangs shows few signs of being resolved. Racial segregation in the city has barely changed for 40 years. In the face of such minimal gains from earnest attempts to fix our biggest social problems, the reflexive 'sending thoughts and prayers' approach to U.S. gun violence somehow seems less vapid: Gun violence, like racial prejudice and inequality, often appears to be the kind of problem that only wishes can solve. The hope of many that the gun problem might be solved with a single stroke of a legislative pen — that some U.S. president and U.S. Congress will do what no previous government has done and radically reorient gun laws in America — has in practice led to few legislative victories. Whether that will change anytime soon is far from obvious. As a 2022 New York Times headline put it, 'As shootings continue, prospects for gun control action in Congress remain dim.' What has this collection of policies suggested by conventional wisdom added up to? The answer is: little long-term progress in reducing gun violence. This failure is remarkable in part because of how good the U.S. has been at addressing so many other public health problems. Since 1900, death rates per capita have declined by 38% for heart disease, 84% for strokes, 95% for respiratory diseases like influenza and pneumonia, and around 99% for tuberculosis. Overall life expectancy has nearly doubled. Yet the rate of murders, most of which are committed with guns, is almost exactly the same as it was 125 years ago. Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Yahoo
Foundation's $15 million gift to train police supervisors to help reduce gun violence in Chicago
CHICAGO — Hoping to reduce gun violence in Chicago, the Sue Ling Gin Foundation announced a $15 million gift Friday to develop a leadership and management education program for police supervisors. The gift, which will be made to the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, will fund the new five-year program, working with the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Slated to launch in January 2026, all Chicago Police Department supervisors — from sergeants to the superintendent — will participate in mandatory leadership training to be better equipped to solve crimes, connect with the community and prevent gun violence, according to Roseanna Ander, founding executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. 'Policing invests almost nothing in the human capital of people who go into policing,' Ander told the Tribune. 'This is a huge leap forward in changing that and puts Chicago at the forefront.' The new program builds on the 40 hours of required annual training for all officers implemented through a 2019 consent decree in the wake of the 2014 police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The management education will focus on effective leadership, data-driven analytics, officer wellness and building community trust. The curriculum will involve a mix of scenario-based and hands-on training, as well as classroom study, Ander said. 'As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen safety and build trust across the city, we have to invest in the frontline supervisors who are managing day-to-day operations,' Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said in a news release. 'We are deeply grateful to the Sue Ling Gin Foundation for its partnership and support in making this a reality.' Like many large cities, Chicago saw a spike in crime during the pandemic, peaking at 804 homicides in 2021, mostly from gun violence. While the total declined to 573 last year, Chicago remained the city with the most homicides in the U.S., according to research from AH Datalytics, which tracks crime statistics. Gun violence continues to be a major problem in Chicago, although statistics have been steadily improving in the post-pandemic landscape. There were 2,282 shootings in Chicago last year, down from 2,452 in 2023, according to CPD data. Gun violence is down 36% from 2021, when there were 3,554 shootings in the city. Chicago entrepreneur Sue Ling Gin, who died more than a decade ago, has been posthumously fighting gun violence through her foundation in the city where she built her career. The Aurora-born daughter of immigrants, Gin worked in her family's suburban Chinese restaurant growing up and later became a Playboy Bunny at the original Playboy Club in Chicago. In 1983, she launched Flying Food Group at Chicago's Midway Airport, building it into a network of 20 catering kitchens from Honolulu to New York, servicing more than 70 airlines. Gin also managed and developed an extensive Chicago-area real estate portfolio. When she died in 2014 at age 73 after suffering a stroke, Gin left a sizable estate, which was used to fund her foundation. In 2021, the foundation made its first major gift, a $21 million three-year donation to Chicago CRED, a nonprofit community intervention program that focuses on reducing gun violence in some of the city's most underserved neighborhoods. The foundation's latest gift to fund police supervisor training will take a page from the business world where Gin proved so successful, according to Robert Hamada, former chairman of the Flying Food Group and the estate's trustee. 'Corporations do this kind of continuing education all the time, but government agencies are often unable to prioritize this kind of investment,' Hamada said in a news release. ____
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Yahoo
Foundation's $15 million gift to train police supervisors to help reduce gun violence
Hoping to reduce gun violence in Chicago, the Sue Ling Gin Foundation announced a $15 million gift Friday to develop a leadership and management education program for police supervisors. The gift, which will be made to the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, will fund the new five-year program, working with the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Slated to launch in January 2026, all Chicago Police Department supervisors — from sergeants to the superintendent — will participate in mandatory leadership training to be better equipped to solve crimes, connect with the community and prevent gun violence, according to Roseanna Ander, founding executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. 'Policing invests almost nothing in the human capital of people who go into policing,' Ander told the Tribune. 'This is a huge leap forward in changing that and puts Chicago at the forefront.' The new program builds on the 40 hours of required annual training for all officers implemented through a 2019 consent decree in the wake of the 2014 police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The management education will focus on effective leadership, data-driven analytics, officer wellness and building community trust. The curriculum will involve a mix of scenario-based and hands-on training, as well as classroom study, Ander said. 'As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen safety and build trust across the city, we have to invest in the frontline supervisors who are managing day-to-day operations,' Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said in a news release. 'We are deeply grateful to the Sue Ling Gin Foundation for its partnership and support in making this a reality.' Like many large cities, Chicago saw a spike in crime during the pandemic, peaking at 804 homicides in 2021, mostly from gun violence. While the total declined to 573 last year, Chicago remained the city with the most homicides in the U.S., according to research from AH Datalytics, which tracks crime statistics. Gun violence continues to be a major problem in Chicago, although statistics have been steadily improving in the post-pandemic landscape. There were 2,282 shootings in Chicago last year, down from 2,452 in 2023, according to CPD data. Gun violence is down 36% from 2021, when there were 3,554 shootings in the city. Chicago entrepreneur Sue Ling Gin, who died more than a decade ago, has been posthumously fighting gun violence through her foundation in the city where she built her career. The Aurora-born daughter of immigrants, Gin worked in her family's suburban Chinese restaurant growing up and later became a Playboy Bunny at the original Playboy Club in Chicago. In 1983, she launched Flying Food Group at Chicago's Midway Airport, building it into a network of 20 catering kitchens from Honolulu to New York, servicing more than 70 airlines. Gin also managed and developed an extensive Chicago-area real estate portfolio. When she died in 2014 at age 73 after suffering a stroke, Gin left a sizable estate, which was used to fund her foundation. In 2021, the foundation made its first major gift, a $21 million three-year donation to Chicago CRED, a nonprofit community intervention program that focuses on reducing gun violence in some of the city's most underserved neighborhoods. The foundation's latest gift to fund police supervisor training will take a page from the business world where Gin proved so successful, according to Robert Hamada, former chairman of the Flying Food Group and the estate's trustee. 'Corporations do this kind of continuing education all the time, but government agencies are often unable to prioritize this kind of investment,' Hamada said in a news release. rchannick@
Chicago Tribune
11-04-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Foundation's $15 million gift to train police supervisors to help reduce gun violence
Hoping to reduce gun violence in Chicago, the Sue Ling Gin Foundation announced a $15 million gift Friday to develop a leadership and management education program for police supervisors. The gift, which will be made to the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, will fund the new five-year program, working with the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Slated to launch in January 2026, all Chicago Police Department supervisors — from sergeants to the superintendent — will participate in mandatory leadership training to be better equipped to solve crimes, connect with the community and prevent gun violence, according to Roseanna Ander, founding executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. 'Policing invests almost nothing in the human capital of people who go into policing,' Ander told the Tribune. 'This is a huge leap forward in changing that and puts Chicago at the forefront.' The new program builds on the 40 hours of required annual training for all officers implemented through a 2019 consent decree in the wake of the 2014 police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The management education will focus on effective leadership, data-driven analytics, officer wellness and building community trust. The curriculum will involve a mix of scenario-based and hands-on training, as well as classroom study, Ander said. 'As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen safety and build trust across the city, we have to invest in the frontline supervisors who are managing day-to-day operations,' Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said in a news release. 'We are deeply grateful to the Sue Ling Gin Foundation for its partnership and support in making this a reality.' Like many large cities, Chicago saw a spike in crime during the pandemic, peaking at 804 homicides in 2021, mostly from gun violence. While the total declined to 573 last year, Chicago remained the city with the most homicides in the U.S., according to research from AH Datalytics, which tracks crime statistics. Gun violence continues to be a major problem in Chicago, although statistics have been steadily improving in the post-pandemic landscape. There were 2,282 shootings in Chicago last year, down from 2,452 in 2023, according to CPD data. Gun violence is down 36% from 2021, when there were 3,554 shootings in the city. Chicago entrepreneur Sue Ling Gin, who died more than a decade ago, has been posthumously fighting gun violence through her foundation in the city where she built her career. The Aurora-born daughter of immigrants, Gin worked in her family's suburban Chinese restaurant growing up and later became a Playboy Bunny at the original Playboy Club in Chicago. In 1983, she launched Flying Food Group at Chicago's Midway Airport, building it into a network of 20 catering kitchens from Honolulu to New York, servicing more than 70 airlines. Gin also managed and developed an extensive Chicago-area real estate portfolio. When she died in 2014 at age 73 after suffering a stroke, Gin left a sizable estate, which was used to fund her foundation. In 2021, the foundation made its first major gift, a $21 million three-year donation to Chicago CRED, a nonprofit community intervention program that focuses on reducing gun violence in some of the city's most underserved neighborhoods. The foundation's latest gift to fund police supervisor training will take a page from the business world where Gin proved so successful, according to Robert Hamada, former chairman of the Flying Food Group and the estate's trustee. 'Corporations do this kind of continuing education all the time, but government agencies are often unable to prioritize this kind of investment,' Hamada said in a news release.
