Over the past two weeks we have seen more shootings, more marches, and a gun turn-in day that saw more than 6,800 guns exchanged for gift cards.  In the end the number of young people killed this summer has risen to nine.

Third teenager since June shot within several blocks on Far South Side

Teen slain on Albany Park street

2 wounded in South Side drive-by

Mother, 18, charged with murder in newborn’s death

Chicago Defender

By now, most of you have read about Mya Lyons, a 9-year-old girl found stabbed to death Monday night. There is no need rehashing the tragic details of her death. When I first heard about it, I felt a bit of deja vu, recalling the murder of 11-year-old Ryan Harris, whose death will be approaching its 10-year anniversary in August.

It is moments like these that the issue of youth violence shows itself to be more than the back and forth we have seen play out in the press this past year. There’s no fight over guns and gun-control in the death of Mya Lyons. There’s no fight over gangs. There’s no fight over after-school programs or jobs in the community. What we have here is something so brutal that it’s unanswerable. And you know what? That’s alright. Everything doesn’t have an easy answer, or what we personally think is an easy answer. Sometimes things are so complex and a shock to our system that all we can do is think. Maybe a little more thinking is a good thing for us, because we have a lot to think about in our communities. The death of this little girl is more than a problem that can be fixed with simple legislation or protest.

This is what is missed in the debate we have about guns and external problems in relation to youths who die by gun violence. Guns are only one component of the problem. Chicago has had a gun ban for more than 25 years. How far has that gotten us to stopping the violence if we see a march or rally to stop it almost every weekend?

Numbers of murders (homicides) in Chicago per year:

• 1990: 851
• 1991: 927
• 1992: 943
• 1993: 931
• 1994: 929
• 1995: 827
• 1996: 789
• 1997: 759
• 1998: 704
• 1999: 641
• 2000: 628
• 2001: 666
• 2002: 647
• 2003: 598
• 2004: 448
• 2005: 449
• 2006: 467
• 2007: 435

That is not to say there is a need for some type of gun control, but we can’t ignore the bigger picture in this story. What is that bigger picture? I don’t know, honestly. I’m still trying to figure that out. I have to admit that sometimes I wonder if it is a battle worth fighting. I’m sure some of you feel the same way at one point or another. A little voice says, “Something will happen whether or not I do anything. So, what’s the point?” But another voice soon follows, rebutting, “If not you, who?” So for those who nonetheless feel outrage or a sinking feeling over this senseless tragedy, remember you are not alone. Remember these words from the poet Aeschylus:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

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.

CeaseFire

Where to begin? Today marks one month since the last day of school for Chicago Public School students. The last week of school saw thousands of students go to Soldier Field to hold a rally, speaking out on the gun violence that has taken too many young lives. But with one step forward of people coming together, the unity was dealt a step back when, the night before the rally, 15-year-old Ignacio Montano was shot and killed. Montano had been a student at Kelvyn Park High School.

Since that week, Chicago has seen a chilling rise in shootings that some feared might come with the warmer weather, but didn’t say publically because they already used that excuse when 37 people were shot during one weekend in April. In one month:

Violence across city leaves two teens dead, one hurt

3 teens injured in shootings

1 killed, 1 injured in Lawndale shooting

5 people shot in front of Bellwood home

Teen shot in basement of South Side church

2 children wounded by gunfire on far South Side

Boy shot in Austin neighborhood dies of wounds

Boy, 15, wounded in drive-by shooting on Chicago’s South Side

That sampling only goes back to June 30. Just last night two more teens — 15-year-old Juan Aguilero and 17-year-old Marlow Jones — were shot and killed in separate incidents on the South Side. All that can come to mind is a lyric from an old U2 song that asks, “How long must we sing this song?”

This rash of violence comes on the heels of a report released by the Children’s Defense Fund that says 3,006 children and teens died from gun violence in 2005, the first increase since 1994. According to its press release, the eight children and teens killed by gun violence each day is the equivalent of one Northern Illinois University shooting every 15 hours and one Virginia Tech shooting every four days.

Maybe if all of these shootings happened downtown, like the one at this year’s Taste of Chicago, we might have a little more action beyond preaching to the choir about what needs to be done. Even Chicago’s own presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, offered his take on the recent violence at a June 25 press conference.

“We have to put more cops on the street. We have to trace guns that have been used. We have to have improved schools, after-school programs, and summer school programs,” Obama said. “Those are things government can do. Parents have to do their jobs. Fathers have to be home and be apart of their children’s lives”

Not quite breaking news. We have heard this remedy in one variation or another from countless officials, but with little action to back it up.  It almost sounded like a repeat of his Father’s Day speech on the responsibility of fathers. Maybe it’s time we started giving speeches to those we elect on the responsibilities of being a leader.

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.

ABC 7 Chicago will host a special program entitled Stop the Violence: Conflicts & Resolution. The program is the third effort put together by the station that focuses on the violence plaguing too many young people in Chicago. I’m crossing my fingers that channel 7 does a better a job than the CBS2/WBBM violence special that left out the youth voice in its debate.

Stop the Violence will air tomorrow, May 22, at 6:30 p.m., with an encore presentation on Saturday, May 24, at 2:00 p.m.

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.

Full Article

Ishma Stewart (Chicago Tribune/Legacy.com)

Video Courtesy of CBS 2 Chicago

Earlier today, funeral services were held for slain Loyola journalism student Ishma Stewart at Johnson Funeral Home on the city’s West Side. Stewart, 20, was the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting last week on the 4800 block of South Indiana Avenue. No suspect has been caught at this time. To view or sign her obituary guestbook, you can go here.

The Violence Project’s thoughts and prayers are with the Stewart family and all of the families who have suffered such an unspeakable tragedy.

Dr. Ron Rufo is a crime prevention speaker with the Chicago Police Department. His police work mainly focuses on juvenile crime and speaking to various students about the dangers of joining gangs. In March, Rufo was stationed at Crane Technical High School the day student Ruben Ivy was killed.

Below, Rufo talks about a boy who learned the consequences of gangs the hard way.

Dr. Ron Rufo

Transcript:

So then I talk about paralyzation. I talk about dying. I talk about paralyzation. Then I talk about a young man that I actually tried to help when I was in the ninth district. I get a little choked up sometimes telling this story because it’s true. This young man was a good boy, but he lived in the heart of a gang on Morgan Street.

He said to me, “Officer Rufo, I don’t want to join a gang, but they’re pressuring me.”

One September when I was going to a school I happen to see this young man and his mom was pushing him in a wheelchair. He had got shot

He said, “Didn’t you hear what happened to me?”

Because that was my old beat.

He said, “Didn’t you hear what happened to me?”

I said, “No I didn’t. Can you tell me?”

He said, “Well, a couple guys got shot.” A rival gang, which is down the street, came over and started shooting.

The one guy he mentioned got killed, and I didn’t know about that. Another kid got shot in the leg…or like the lower leg by his ankle. And he got shot in the back. He said, “I’ve been paralyzed since.”

That’s what I tell these kids.

He asked me what I was doing. I said I was in preventive programs. I go out and teach kids about not joining a gang. He said would you mention my name and mention this to them:

“I didn’t listen to you and look where I’m at. My mom has to clean me, bathe me, and do everything else. My so-called gang, my so-called family never came to see me at the hospital, and they walk across the street while my mom is pushing me. “

Now, he’s got to be about 21.

He said, “Where are they now? I gave my life for them, and look what I have to live for: Nothing, and this how I’m going to be the rest of my life.”