The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Chicago Way: Obamaland Reports 500 Homicides (So Far) This Year

Posted on | December 31, 2012 | 19 Comments

“The city’s latest homicide occurred around 9 p.m. Thursday when Nathaniel T. Jackson, 40, an alleged gang member with a lengthy arrest record, was gunned down . . .
“Jackson was shot in the head outside Noah Foods at Augusta Boulevard and Lavergne Avenue, police said. . . .
“Jackson grew up on the West Side, a few miles from where he was gunned down, and had been released from prison this past summer after serving a sentence for robbery.”
– Chicago Tribune, Dec. 28

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy are shocked — shocked! — to learn drug gangs don’t obey gun-control laws:

The rising homicide toll, 500 as of Friday, a 17 percent increase in slayings over last year — has been a looming shadow over Chicago, plaguing residents and the city’s leadership for much of the year. . . .
Experts warn not to put too fine a point on year-over-year increases in homicides, but Chicago’s tally this year is the highest since 2008. . . .
In McCarthy’s view, the proliferation of guns on Chicago’s streets, which he said is unlike any other city in the country, and the division of gangs into smaller factions are to blame for the homicide surge.
Many of these factions, or “cliques,” run low-level narcotics markets on street corners and flaunt their activities on YouTube and other social media websites, sometimes to taunt other factions or members of rival gangs. That often leads to violent skirmishes on the street, he said. . . .
Police statistics show that roughly 1 in 4 of this year’s homicide victims were affiliated with the Gangster Disciples — Chicago’s largest street gang that has gradually splintered into about 250 factions.

Hmmm. So, if you could subtract the Gangster Disciples from the equation, you would immediately achieve a 25% reduction in homicides. This raises the question of why Chicago police haven’t done a better job of identifying members of the Gangster Disciples before they’re shot dead.  Why is it that cops in Chicago can’t figure out that someone is a Gangster Disciple until he’s wearing a toe-tag in the morgue?

The Gangster Disciples aren’t a social club or a political activist organization. Criminality is the entire purpose of the gang, and all of its members are criminals, as the name of the gang rather emphatically implies. So it would therefore seem to be in the interest of Chicago law enforcement to (a) identify members of the Gangster Disciples, (b) subject these gang members to heightened police scrutiny, (c) arrest gang members if they so much as violate a city ordinance against littering or jaywalking, (d) prosecute them to the maximum extent of the law, and thereby (e) steadily reduce the number of Gangster Disciples who are out on the streets and killing people.

Repeat after me: Crime is a people problem.

Chicago’s problem is not guns, it’s hoodlums, and unless and until Chicago decides to get serious about busting hoodlums — a zero-tolerance policy that aims at the absolute eradication of the Gangster Disciples and every other dope gang in the city — all the gun-control laws in the world are nothing but a sick joke on the citizenry.

Convicted felons have no right to have guns, so the first step toward disarming the gangsters is to start targeting them for increased police scrutiny and prosecuting them to the max. Throw the book at every hoodlum you catch with a dime bag in his pocket or a busted turn signal on his car. Bust ‘em at every opportunity.

Make the bail bondsmen and the public defender’s office work overtime, and if the ACLU wants to complain about overcrowding at the jail, fight ‘em all the way to the Supreme Court. Lock up as many as hoodlums as possible, and make it clear to every mother’s son on the streets that joining the gangs is a one-way ticket to prison or the grave: They can obey the law, or else have the Chicago P.D. as their worst enemy.

Every preacher and teacher in the community ought to be on board for that message. Send your toughest cops into the schools to give presentations — fifth-graders are not too young to understand it — explaining this citywide commitment to maximum enforcement. “You break the law, kids, you’re going to jail, and you’d better tell your brothers and sisters to stay on the strait and narrow way.”

This rant was inspired this morning after I re-Tweeted a blog post by John Hoge, and got some blowback from a Chicago journalist:

 

The problem with Dane Tidwell, as with too many journalists nowadays, is that unlike me they didn’t spend their adolescence running around with hoodlums and therefore don’t really understand the hoodlum mentality. The redneck hoodlums of my Georgia youth weren’t really all that different from the hoodlums who are currently terrorizing the citizens of Chicago, the main difference being that, back in the day, Douglas County Sheriff Earl Lee had the overwhelming support of the community in his long campaign to put the fear of God into law-breakers.

You could ask Paul John Knowles about that, except that Knowles ain’t been around to tell his side of the story lately.





 

 


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Category: Chicago, Crime, Rahm Emanuel

Comments

  • Raxter

    According to Tidwell, “Every real piece of research” would only be the ones that support his side of the debate. All other research is obviously fake…

  • Quartermaster

    I’ve owned guns for nigh on 40 years now, along with two “assault weapons.” I ain’t dead, and my “assault weapons” have assaulted anyone, nor have I heard them calling to me to off something. Perhaps I got cheated and those aren’t really “assault weapons.” I wonder if I can get my money back now.

    A few Squirrels have had cause to fear me, however. But those are just rats by another name anywayz.

    Tidwell needs to do a bit of real research on guns and crime. Guns raise the safety margin for the overwhelming majority of those that own them. But, that would take work he doesn’t want to do.

  • http://twitter.com/wjjhoge WJJ Hoge

    If, as Mr. Tidwell says, owning a weapon makes you less safe, Chicago must be awash with guns compared to Dallas given roughly 3X the number of murders this year.

  • http://www.leftbankofthecharles.com/ Charles

    You left out the most important (f) keep the gangsters you do catch in jail.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    Note that the 25% is attributable to a single gang. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of homicides by gun are criminal-on-criminal between gangs and/or drug dealers, etc. Most of the rest are committed by known criminals upon innocent victims in the commission of other crimes. Only a tiny portion of the annual gun homicides are committed by people with no violent criminal record against innocent family members, co-workers, or bystanders.

    Mr. Tidwell is way off on his “research” claim as well. He just flat made it up. Challenge the lying hack to put up, or shut up.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    There is no research supporting his side, else he would be shoving it in everyone’s faces. The fact is that all existing research proves the opposite.

    Strict gun control laws do slightly reduce the homicide rate among whites, but that is overwhelmed by the increased rate among minorities associated with GC laws.

  • Cube

    And would reach a conclusion he definitely doesn’t want to hear.

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  • http://twitter.com/wjjhoge WJJ Hoge

    Now that’s raaaaacist!

  • Jack Okie

    From the Wikipedia article about Paul John Knowles, on his final capture:

    A chaotic footrace ensued, with Knowles pursued by dogs and helicopters. He was finally cornered by an armed civilian with a shotgun, who escorted Knowles to a nearby residence where a call to the police was made. The maniacal crime spree of John Paul Knowles had come to an end.

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  • JeffS

    Fun Fact #1: I lived in the Chicago area for a few years, back in the late 1980′s. I worked in the Loop, commuting from a suburb.

    Fun fact #3: I bought my first, personal, “military style rifle”, a/k/a “assault rifle”, a/k/a “Scary Gun™” in that period. In a Chicago suburb. For cash. An H&K 91, with an assortment of magazines and accessories. A nice rifle that I sold a few years later, in order to buy other Scary Guns™. It was fun to shoot, there were several ranges, and ammunition was readily available throughout the area. I had to get a “firearms owner identification card” in order to buy ammo, for which I sent a form, $5, and a picture to the State of Illinois. I never did confirm the story that similar cards had been issued to Al Capone and a dog named Spot, but I have no reason to disbelieve them. Given the level of corruption and greed in that state, I have to wonder just much more porous Illinois gun control laws are these days.

    Fun Fact #3: During this same period, another employee of the organization I worked for had her home raided by the Chicago Police. It seems that she supplemented her income by renting out her basement as an arms room for one of the gangs. The array of recovered weapons was impressive, and included a number of explosive devices. The gang violence didn’t even hiccup from this.

    Fun Fact #4: I drilled with the Illinois Army National Guard, and they had to keep a sharp eye out on their arms rooms, as the gangs looked upon them with envy, and had many members in the Guard on the prowl. Several weapons were stolen every year. One M16 turned up in Lebanon, IIRC. One M1911A1 was carried out by a gang banger during drill, after the armorer left him alone in the vault, and didn’t lock down the pistol cabinet. Couldn’t prove it, though we tried. The armorer was union, and hence untouchable. (Other gang bangers would join the Guard, get basic and advanced training, draw their gear upon graduating, promptly sell it, and never attended another drill again).

    (Oddly enough, the militias downstate never went for the weapons; they wanted communication gear, tools, test sets, etc.)

    The purpose of my rant? Chicago is a model for another Zimbabwe, and not any country that I would want to live in. I haven’t touched my contacts with the Chicago Police, city government, Cook County, State of Illinois, unions, and other crooks living and working there. Emanuel, and other communists like him, likes the set up simply because he’s in the upper echelons, and can look down upon the proles without worrying about getting splashed by the shit, mud, and blood. I moved out of that shithole for a reason, and that reason was The Chicago Way.

    Avoid the Chicago Way, people. At all costs.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    I love how leftists back their claims with statements like “all economists agree,” or “all members of law enforcement agree,” or “all scientists agree” or, Dane, here, who says “every real piece of research shows.”

    These same people would then turn around and decry the use of absolutes in any form of reasoning; usually by uttering The Fool’s Absolute: “there aren’t any absolutes.”

    The translation of all of their ridiculous claims is always the same: “because shut up, that’s why.”

    Hey Dane, are you aware that the number of crimes deterred by firearms each year vastly dwarfs the number of murders by firearm?

  • http://www.facebook.com/jamal.imoz Jamal Imoz

    If a Chicago cop is making $1000, 2000, 5000 a week running interference for the Gangster Disciples, why should she arrest them? Should she look to the Aldermans or Mayor for an ethical example. She gettin’ paid…just like the sewer politicians who take in way more than she.

  • Esau’s Message

    There are some flaws in the plan here. And they all relate to the Chicago Way.

    If the Cook County Machine and the Outfit wanted to stop these gang wars, they would. In same way, the Outfit is benefiting from these wars.

    Second, the police in Chicago are all unutterably corrupt. No decent man would ever join that force. They look the other way because they are told to look the other way, and as Jamal says below, are paid off, not so much by the gangs as by the Outfit. (A cop who’s owned by more than one gang is no use to either one.)

    Third, these gangster losers figure that a stint in jail is essentially equivalent to graduate or professional school. The way the kid in Winnetka goes to law school, they go to prison. Prison ain’t gonna scare them. (That doesn’t mean that getting them the hell off the streets is a bad idea.)

    I’m not opposed to anything Stace proposes, I just think it ain’t enough. The Outfit and Cook County Machine must be finally broken, by the FBI and federal prosecution before Chicago can hope for better.

  • Quartermaster

    It is awash with gun. Most are owned by the gangs.

  • Quartermaster

    No, sadly, he doesn’t know that. He already knows a lot that just isn’t so and that crowds out all the stuff he really does need to know. Sadly, his ignorance is invincible.

  • JeffS

    Agreed. The level of corruption in Chicago was staggering when I left in 1989; then I equated a City alderman to a robber baron. Today, it’s likely a warlord.

    Chicago is an infection, and must be treated as such.

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