Chicago’s murder rate has fallen – so why are dozens of people being killed and injured every weekend?

A city with one of the highest rates of gun violence, Chicago has seen homicide rates decline over the past three years. But guns are still making their way into the city. Chris Stevenson investigates

Chicago police confiscate one illegal gun every hour hour for the entire year, with more than half of them coming from outside the state (Getty)

I’m done, I can’t do this anymore.” Those were the words of Guadalupe Cruz after seeing a young man, Josh, shot in front of her on his doorstep last November. Cruz, known as Lupe, had been coming to see Josh as part of her work on violence prevention in Chicago. She had known Josh since he was a boy, was close to his family.

Calling relatives to inform them of the murder was “the hardest call I’ve ever had to make”, Lupe says, pausing to gather her thoughts. She still feels a deep sense of hurt and loss over the killing, something that cannot be dulled by a decade of working for the group Cure Violence or having informally protected at-risk children for more than 20 years before that.

Stories about the tragedy that shootings bring have grown ever more frequent in the past couple of years – but it is the soul-crushing monotony of the situation in Chicago that is worthy of note. Last weekend, at least six people were killed and 22 were injured in shooting violence. The weekend before that three people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, including children. In Lupe’s neighbourhood of Little Village, a drive-by shooting left one dead and another person injured.

Few weekends involve no violence. During the last weekend of May, in violence blamed mostly on gang-related attacks in the city’s west side, where Little Village is located, eight were left dead and more than 50 were injured – 31 of those during the first 12 hours of the weekend (officially marked as Friday). All this in a city that has seen the number of killings drop by 25 per cent since 2016, a year when 762 people were murdered.

25

per cent decrease in the number of homicides in Chicago since 2016

Such a fall, to 561 murders in 2018, would be hailed a miracle in almost any other city. The administration would be held up as an example to the rest of the nation. In Chicago, the sheer weight of numbers mean that the grim, slow struggle against the destruction of neighbourhoods by violence merely continues. The murder total in 2018 was higher than the combined number in the country’s two other largest cities. As of mid-December, New York reported 278 homicides and Los Angeles 243. Those two cities have a combined population of roughly 12.5 million people to Chicago’s 2.8 million.

In the first five months of 2019, Chicago Police Department recorded 186 homicides, a 13 per cent decrease in shootings and a 7 per cent fall in murders year-on-year. For Lupe, it is nowhere near enough. Despite what she said in November, Lupe is still on the streets. Beyond the mind-numbing statistics, Lupe says the only way people can understand what things are like is by getting a glimpse into her typical day.

Lupe is an interrupter or mediator – people who insert themselves into conflicts to prevent further bloodshed. Her last mediation involved two young people whose bad blood had risen to the level of shooting at each other; her credibility in the neighbourhood led someone to reach out to Lupe.

One of those involved was the grandchild of Lupe’s friend. She’d known the shooter “for most of their life”. Having sat down and discussed the problem with them, it is now an “active” conflicts that Lupe needs to monitor. She must also head to funerals after shootings, looking to prevent retaliations that can escalate and draw more people in. Lupe says she will speak to “key individuals” who have influence over younger teenagers and children. “Without that,” she adds, “these guys will kill each other.’’

A shooting at the city’s Mercy Hospital last November resulted in four deaths, including a police officer and a doctor (AP)

“When we lose somebody, [the issue of] retaliation is really important because in these communities retaliation is a must when it comes to street life,” she says. “Being there at that moment and for them to be able to hear you is important.” Lupe will often bring food to such funerals, trying to take as much pressure as possible off pressure grieving families. She will also help with hotel rooms for those left without a place to stay, especially if they’ve fled their homes, fearing reprisals and being gunned down on their own property.

“I’m doing the work because I have to. It’s what I do,” she says, a note of tiredness creeping into her voice. “I feel like I can’t let these kids down, a lot of the time they depend on me.”

Summer is especially important. As the weather improves and people congregate outside houses and in parks violence normally spikes. Last August, at least 12 people were killed and 72 injured in one of the most violent weekends in recent memory.

For Lupe, taking young people for an ice cream or arranging a game of basketball can be the difference between a peaceful week or finding another neighbour or friend has been shot or stabbed. Lupe used to provide such safe haven for kids in a sweet shop and arcade she set up with her husband in the 1980s. Her husband was killed much later in a robbery and now Lupe pours her efforts into keeping “her kids” off the streets.

“The aim is to tire them out, so they’ll go home and not stay on the streets,” Lupe says of her day’s work. Through various outreach programmes, from Cure Violence and others, Lupe also helps young people in Little Village access help on writing CVs as she pushes them to get jobs or go to college. She is wary of youngsters being left at the margins of society by what can be “one bad choice” to carry a weapon or join a gang.

Chicago’s recently elected mayor Lori Lightfoot has made the issue of gun violence a priority (Reuters)

Lupe was one of those, a former gang member who managed to pull herself away from what would have been a much different life. “People are penalised for one bad choice. If I had been, I wouldn’t be where I am at today,” she says. Outside of Little Village, Chicago appears to be coming to a crossroads on gun violence. A new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, was inaugurated in May. The first black woman and the first openly gay leader of the city, Lightfoot has said that violence, specifically gun violence, is a priority for her.

Murders have been trending downwards. In 2017, the last year full FBI statistics are available, Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, had the 14th highest murder rate among cities with a population above 100,000. That worked out at 24 killings per 100,000 people, much lower than the 66.1 murders per 100,000 people of St Louis, Missouri. And when the FBI calculated the net decrease in murders across the county from 2016 to 2017 – a drop of 129 killings – Chicago accounted for 86 per cent of the total.

But the city is nowhere near the mid-to-high-400 number of murders between the years 2012 to 2015 before the spike in violence in 2016. The south and west sides of the city are the main problem areas. The new strategic decision support centre (SDSC) – founded to track gun crime trends and deploy resources – is having a big impact in the notorious southern neighbourhood of Englewood.

But for every success, there is another problem. The police department confiscated nearly 10,000 illegal guns in 2018, a 9 per cent rise on the previous year. While the department has rightly hailed it as a win, it is a clear sign that issues remain. Many weapons have been connected to gangs on the south and west sides of the city, including stories of one gun that has been used in more than 30 crimes including killings and assaults. One illegal gun is confiscated essentially once an hour for the entire year, with more than half of them coming from outside the state.

For Charlie Ransford, director of science and policy, this is a problem that needs to be treated like a virus. “Violence is contagious, as is the flow of guns. One act leads to other retaliations, and then even more people are traumatised and more likely to commit or seek out the means for more violence,” he says.

Illinois did not have a complete state budget for the financial years 2016 and 2017, which meant many violence prevention programmes were defunded. This helped create a situation where the “epidemic of violence” was left unchecked in many neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods were predominantly low-income or black or Latino-majority with social problems that went beyond what the police could deal with alone.

Chicago police officers and detectives investigate a shooting (Getty)

“By 2018, we started to manage the epidemic,” Ransford says, citing Cure Violence and a number of other community-led outreach programmes. “About 25 per cent of the neighbourhoods that are prone to violence are using this ‘managing an epidemic’ approach.” Ransford believes continuing this progress is what will help the police, and city authorities, get back on track. He says that Lightfoot, the major, has the right approach in calling violence “a public health crisis” and treating it like a virus that needs to be contained.

“We have been embarked on what I would call a proactive strategy that looks at gun violence as a public health crisis, which is what it is,” Lightfoot said last month. “That means we look at the root causes of the violence. That means we invest in neighbourhoods, we restitch together our broken social safety net.”

I have a lot of young girls that are doing the work I do now, they were my participants and I see them now mediating conflicts

Lupe Cruz

Ransford said a good place to start would be the police spending budget and, specifically, the amount handed out to officers working overtime. The city has blown its $95m budget for overtime in a just a few years by increasing the police presence on the streets every time there is a significant spike in violence at a weekend. He adds that in the 20 years Cure Violence has been going, its budget has reached a peak of $6.5m, much less than the overtime bill.

“In terms of valuing approaches, the police punitive approach is getting large sums, but in terms of preventative measures we are putting in a peak of $6m and sometimes much less,” he says. “If Chicago invested about $50m – or even $30m – in violence prevention each year, you could see murders and killings plummet to the low 300s.”

That 300 target is something Chicago police are aiming for, to put them in line with New York and LA. “That is much further than anyone expects it to drop in the near future,” says Ransford. “[More violence prevention funding] would turn around things pretty tremendously.” Lupe agrees that more money needs to be put into violence prevention and outreach programmes, but she has “mixed feelings” about whether city hall can bring about a mass change.

She prefers to concentrate on those around her and the quest to pass on the torch of her work so that she can finally give it up. Lupe’s voice perks up when she talks about the number of young people, and particularly young women, she has under her wing. “I have a lot of young girls that are doing the work I do now, they were my participants and I see them now mediating conflicts,” she says.

Chicago police have blown the $95m overtime budget (Getty)

Even police understand the important role individual communities will play, with Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson saying at a press conference last week that “we cannot do this without the support of communities”. Previously Johnson has cut a figure of frustration in his press conference, saying that more needed to be done to let police know about culprits.

“You all know who these individuals are. They come into your homes every day, sleep with you every night,” Johnson said. “Grandparents, parents, siblings, significant others – you know who they are.” Lupe is looking to protect both those who want to leave the gang life behind and the people who have to live with its violent consequences; she knows that with enough money and time Chicago can finally free itself from the epidemic of violence.

But nobody should expect a quick fix for a deep-rooted problem. Spikes in violence are short, sharp events. Dealing with the aftermath and healing old wounds is a much longer process. “My goal will be to have all the young men and women take the torch from me and continue to shape the community positively and protect it,” she says. “I believe in these programmes because I live it. I know I can get in where nobody else can. I was that child, I was that girl.”