Chicago’s homicide rate down for another year, but is anyone swayed?

For the second straight year, it appears Chicago’s tally of homicide will decline, and certainly isn’t anywhere near how high it reached back in the days of some three decades ago.

Workload not as violent, but it doesn't feel easier

Yet let’s be honest; I have no doubt that the instant another incident occurs that we’ll get another diatribe from Donald Trump and his ilk about just how god-awfully violent the Second City is.

AS THOUGH THE key to our improvement is to replace our elected officials with people inclined to sympathize with this Age of Trump we now live in. Allowing ourselves to be perceived as “blue” and the reason why Illinois is so intensely hostile toward Republican interests is the real reason for the diatribes.

For I doubt the people who make such absurd statements really care about the conditions in Chicago. It’s just another partisan piece of rhetoric they can use against the political opposition.

I doubt they care in the least about the people who actually have to suffer in the parts of Chicago that provide the bulk of the incidents that comprise most of the city’s homicide rate. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the ideologues who most complain about the city’s statistics related to violence think the people who are the brunt of the incidents are to blame for their own circumstances.

That’s the reason why I have such hostile reactions toward anybody who tries to make an issue of the homicide total – which in coming days is going to get another update.

FOR WE’RE IN a New Year. As of Friday (Dec. 28), there had been 570 people killed by the deliberate actions of another human being (which is the very definition of ‘homicide’). When one adds in the weekend running through incidents as late as midnight Monday, that’s bound to increase a bit.

But it would take a total bloodbath for the death tally for Chicago to exceed the 675 of 2017, which itself was lower than 2016 – which is starting to appear more and more like some sort of statistical fluke.

Rather than a return to the days of the late 1980s into the early 1990s, when it was typical for there to be between 900 and 1,000 homicides per year – which means the recent spurt isn’t even close to what this city used to experience.

Not all explosions are celebratory fireworks

I’ll be honest and admit that era sticks in my mind particularly harshly; largely because that’s back in the day when I worked for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago and the daily activity of the Chicago Police was on the forefront of my mind.

BUT EVEN THEN, the bulk of violent crime in Chicago was contained to certain neighborhoods. There were parts of Chicago where a single violent death would be considered a major headline, while other parts of Chicago would have so many incidents that most of them were never covered beyond anybody but a “City News” kid reporter.

The sad part of this story is that, according to a Chicago Tribune report on Monday, it appears the leading police districts for violent crime will be Harrison on the West Side and Englewood on the South.

Which, to be honest, were the leaders for violent crime back in my own police reporting days.

It’s as though nothing has changed, and certain parts of Chicago continue to get the brunt of everything that is wrong with the city – while other parts manage to benefit from the city’s improvements of recent decades.

WHICH IS WHAT I’m sure the ideologues will complain is some form of hypocrisy on the part of Chicagoans – talking up our strengths while ignoring those of us who don’t fall into certain demographics.

TRUMP: Numbers won't matter, he'll complain!

Yet I’d also note that the ideologues are more than willing to see certain peoples amongst us (most often, the ones of us whose complexion doesn’t resemble their own in the least) continue to suffer from violence and the other societal problems that are brought about by such attitudes.

As in they’re merely interested in using a high homicide tally to tag the rest of us with a dirty brush. And as for the people who will suffer, I can’t help but think of those who (invariably) will perish in the early hours of Tuesday – starting off a new year with the same ol’ nonsense,

You just know someone will be hit by stray shrapnel from a nitwit who thinks the way to kick of 2019 is to fire off a weapon into the air; hitting an unintended target several blocks away.

  -30-

What should we think of homicide tally – on the rise, decline or nonsense?

The partisanship of politics is going to be played with the violence tallies for Chicago – regardless of how many people are killed and whether that’s less or more than in the past.

Homicide tallies on decline in Englewood neighborhood this year -- will it last?

We’re going to hear tons of rants from all sides over the fact that some 600 people have been killed in Chicago this year. That total was reached last week, and some are more than eager to say that means Chicago remains as violent a place as ever.

ALTHOUGH I COULDN’T help but notice the official Chicago Police Department spin that was placed on the tally. They pointed out the fact that in the Englewood neighborhood, the number of murders during 2017 was only 45.

Which is far less than the 79 murders that took place in that neighborhood’s police district during the same time period last year – a year in which Chicago had 780 slayings, more than in any year during the 21^st Century.

The point being that the neighborhood often thought of as the most violent in Chicago (unless you want to hang on to old memories of the West Side’s North Lawndale neighborhood being the “American Millstone”) is experiencing a decline in urban violence.

A fact, I’m sure, that the conservative ideologues amongst us who want to believe that Chicago is all that is wrong with our society will not want to believe. They’ll want to emphasize that 600-plus tally. Then again, they’ll only want to believe the worst.

JUST AS I’M sure they’ll want to continue thinking of the city to the east, Gary, Ind., as the “murder capital” of the country – even though a raw reading of the numbers don’t back that up (there are more violent places than the one-time “City of the Century”).

Then again, in this era where the “fake news” label is thrown about, they’ll believe what they want.

The reason I bring up Gary is the fact that their homicide tally thus far in 2017 is also 45. As in Gary being as violent in a technical sense as the Englewood neighborhood.

New downtown Gary mural doesn't erase "murder capital" image. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

Should this mean we should disregard claims that Englewood is getting better because it has the same tally as Gary, Ind.? Could bringing that Whole Foods supermarket into the neighborhood be having a slight impact on making the South Side neighborhood a more livable place for its residents?

OR COULD IT mean that numbers can be used to make just about any claim one wants to do? That without context, no homicide tally really means much of anything!

Keep in mind that I’m not trying to downplay the level of violence we’re experiencing in Chicago. Any one death is a tragedy; it certainly isn’t something to be celebrated.

Yet I can’t help but think that many of the people who get obsessed about keeping track of the death tallies for Chicago are more interested in perpetuating the image of Chicago as an excessively violent place that no self-respecting person would want to live in.

Which in my mind is an attitude that discredits itself, and not just because I often view Chicago as being the Greatest City on Planet Earth. I sense that the people most eager to spew such talk are the ones who have no interest in actually resolving the problem of our violence level.

THEY CERTAINLY WOULD be disappointed if our incidents of violence actually declined. They want to keep the image of a “hellhole” alive, and it won’t really matter what the actual numbers are for the homicide rate.

TRUMP: Should we care what his fans think?

My point being that I’m not going to get obsessed with that “600” total that we surpassed last week – other than to admit it is sad to have so many incidents that resulted in families out there losing loved ones.

Nor am I going to over-exaggerate the significance of that 57 percent drop in slayings within the Englewood neighborhood; unless we can see it turn into a trend that lasts for several years.

The real story will be what occurs in 2018 and 2019 and the coming years in Chicago – a long-range view that I’m sure the ideologues amongst us will find to be “boring!” but is more relevant than any of the nonsense they prefer to spew.

  -30-

What should we think about safety?

We’re not safer. We’re just crummier shots.”

That was the  observation I heard from a Jewel bagboy when, while bagging some grocery items I was buying, he took a glimpse of the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times I purchased.

 THAT FRONT PAGE  gave us the headline “Under The Gun,” and teased a story about how the number of people killed in Chicago this year thus far is less than what it was last year.

 BUT…

 The number of shooting incidents that have occurred this year compared to last is on the rise.

 Specifically, 5 percent fewer people killed but 8 percent more incidents involving gunfire, according to the Sun-Times for the first six months of 2014 compared to the first half of 2013 – which was a way-above-average year.

 ONE IN WHICH people would have to look back into Chicago history to find a period that was more violent than ’13 was for the Second City.

 Now I’m not about to take seriously the views of a guy who managed to avoid crushing my grocery items while putting them into plastic bags. I’m well aware that he was trying to make a joke while engaging in some small talk to keep himself from being bored.

 He also speculated about how wonderful Jose Abreu was for the Chicago White Sox this year. Is he a top-notch sports commentator?

 Besides, a part of me wanted to retort as a gag that perhaps that the statistical combination  was evidence of the advancement of medical techniques – we’re saving more lives of gunshot victims.

 THE REALITY IS more a matter of  the fact that there are certain parts of  Chicago that have become so violent – and so isolated from the rest of the city that it is way too easy to ignore what happens there.

 While also looking at the fact that there are certain neighborhoods in Chicago where violence, homicide and crime in general is so low that some of us want to believe all the crime stats must be some sort of lie!

 Which is a shame because, in some ways, Chicago is no better or stronger than its weakest, most violent neighborhoods,

 We can brag about the Gold Coast (although my memory of a quarter-century of news stories I wrote about includes people who were shot and killed there too) and try to pretend that Englewood is an alien land.

 BUT THAT KIND of  rhetoric just makes us all seem foolish. Besides, even if the number of people killed is on the decline, there’s still the reality that even one homicide is one too many.

 And to the people directly impacted by the list of the deceased, that one is all that matters. Too many families get devastated, then forgotten about in the mess of murder statistics that are being compiled.

 The sad part is that just the other day, I stumbled across some four-decade-old reruns of “Good Times,” the show where Jimmie Walker tried to become the clown prince of the Chicago ghetto and public housing.

 The episodes I saw were the two-part tale of where Walker’s “J.J.” character was shot by a streetgang member who was trying to recruit/pressure him into joining the “gang.”

 FOR A COMEDY television series, it was way too real. For J.J.’s gunman, gang leader “Mad Dog” wound up getting probation for the shooting because there was no space available to hold him either at the youth home in St. Charles or at the Cook County Jail.

 Those are a set of circumstances that were all too real in 1970s Chicago, and remain true today. How many “Mad Dogs” (his real name was supposed to be “Cleon”) are being produced by the rising numbers of shootings occurring in Chicago?

 

And isn’t that a more significant problem than however many homicides are occurring? You want numbers, check out 11, 25 and .312 – the home run total, runs batted in and batting average for Abreu during the month of June.

 They’re less depressing to think about.

 

 -30-

Chicago homicides at a low in my life; so much for cheap partisan rhetoric

I’ve made it clear before that I’m not among those all hyped up about the rising homicide rate in Chicago – which in 2012 did experience a jolt upward but was far from being anywhere close to a record for urban violence.

So the fact that things seem to have returned to the norm in the now-completed year of 2013 ought to be seen as a plus. The New York Times on Wednesday reported there were 417 homicides in Chicago through Monday.

THERE WERE A couple more on Tuesday, with the final incident in 2013 resulting in a human death being a shooting outside of a store in the Englewood neighborhood. Although the rule of thumb for putting together a homicide tally for the year is that it matters when an incident occurs – not when the person is pronounced dead.

Which means by the end of the week, there could be a few more people added onto the list About 420 slayings for 2013 is the most accurate figure that we can give now. It's an educated guess.

Which, according to the Chicago Tribune means this year will probably go down in the books as being the lowest homicide total since 1965 – the year of my birth.

I’m pushing close to 50 (another year and a half) and this could turn out to be the safest the city has ever been.

ALL THAT MAY well be true. But I’m also realistic enough to know that none of this statistical spin means anything if you’re of the parts of Chicago that are getting hit with the bulk of this violent activity.

And if you’re of a family whose members included one of the approximately 420 deceased, I’m sure it doesn’t matter at all that this is a low – or that 2012 with its 503 homicides was an aberration!

Or that we used to have 900-plus homicides per year in the city back in the late 1980s-early 1990s. It is an era I particularly remember because it is when I regularly wrote about cop-shop stuff for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago. There are still intersections across the city that, in my mind, jolt memories of 26-year-old slayings that too many others have long forgotten.

Englewood ought to warrant our attention

It may well be appropriate that the final violent incident of 2013 occurred around 71^st Street and Vincennes Avenue outside of one of those neighborhood markets that no one outside of Englewood would ever think of shopping at.

MANY OF US wouldn’t even pay attention to this particular incident because of the neighborhood it occurred in.

And those with Englewood ties have probably become so immune to the violence that the masses don’t give a thought to that the only reason the death of 26-year-old Vincent Rogers will be noted was because it occurred with about three-and-a-half hours before Janet Davies could mark the end of 2013 along State Street.

It should also be noted that the urban violence continues even though ’13 is through. The Chicago Tribune reported about shootings in the Fernwood and Park Manor neighborhoods on the South Side.

Four were wounded – although in those cases, the gunmen were Chicago Police patrolmen responding to incidents of shots fired in the neighborhoods.

SO AS WE move forward into ’14 (the holiday’s over – even though I realize there are those who think they’re entitled to do nothing on the job until Monday), we should give a thought about the degree to which we accept violent crimes as part of the status quo.

We as a whole have to take a harsher attitude toward the situation, and not ignore it just because it might not impact our specific home neighborhood.

But more important, going on and on about violence in Chicago just to score cheap political points for someone’s “cause” is even more reprehensible.

Particularly because it tries to make a point that is just factually inaccurate!

  -30-

What should we think – 13 shot, 0 dead

Should we be outraged about the gang-related shooting incident in the Back of the Yards neighborhood that managed to see 13 individuals get hit by gunfire?



Back of Yards, Englewood ignored too often

Or should we feel blessed that this outburst doesn’t add a single digit to the Chicago murder tally for 2013 – it seems that no one has died, and doctors say they expect all to survive.

SHOULD WE THINK of this as an outrage and evidence of the depravity of urban life – literally the worst violent outburst in Chicago since the St. Valentine’s Day massacre (I literally stumbled across someone on Facebook who made that comment)?

Or should we view this as the fluke incident that it would appear to be – usually when we get a dozen or so people shot in a single day, it’s because there were 10 or so incidents that were all completely unrelated. Except for the fact that they all occurred on the same day?

Is this incident going to provoke another outburst of people urging their political people to push for tougher restrictions related to firearms? Which will tick off the firearms fanatics and create another burst of partisan nonsense!

Or is this incident, combined with the shooting incident earlier this week at the U.S. Naval Yard, going to be the motivation that kills off the “gun control” movement once and for all.

YES, I HAVE read that theory put forth on the Internet as well. There’s a whole lot of nonsense that gets written up by people with too much time on their hands.

And now, we get to take into account the latest incident that put Chicago in the national news Friday morning – to the point where it was detracting from the partisan rhetoric emanating from Capitol Hill to try to kill off health care reform by holding the rest of the federal government hostage.

I’ll bet the guy who pulled out a high-powered rifle at a pickup basketball game at Cornell Park on 51^st Street and opened fire – hitting a 3-year-old boy and 12 others – never realized he could have such an impact upon our society.

If it weren’t for all the bloodshed, a part of me would be inclined to thank the guy for taking attention away from the conservative ideologues who probably will defend, to their deaths, the right of that guy to have a military-type weapon with him on the playground!

PERSONALLY, I’M INCLINED to think that Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy hit the right tone when he described the late Thursday incident as a “miracle,” as in no one was killed (although as I write this commentary, that 3-year-old remained in critical condition at Mount Sinai Hospital).

Put this incident into perspective – an auto accident at 56^th and Morgan streets (just over a mile from the park early Friday in the Englewood neighborhood) killed a 2-year-old girl, giving it a higher death tally!

But the fact that the Chicago Sun-Times found people who said it is not uncommon for people to show up around the park and fire off gunshots (“Just gang-banging stuff. It’s what they do,” is how one person described it to the newspaper) is a sad comment on where we have gone as a society.

As for those who want to believe that, somehow, we’d be better off if more people would be armed, I’d think this incident shows the nonsense level of that line of thought. Would we be better off if someone in the park had been able to pull out a pistol and fire back? Or would we merely be talking about 16 or 17 people shot, instead of just 13?

ALTHOUGH JUST A little bit more legalese written into the law concerning firearms isn’t going to change things all by itself. It’s going to take serious attention paid to these urban neighborhoods to try to raise their overall expectations from life.

Instead of our current status, which is that most of us ignore such neighborhoods. Seriously, when was the last time you were anywhere near 51^st Street and Western Avenue (just two blocks west of the park)? When was the last time you even thought about going out there?

That sense of being ignored by the “other” Chicago is what creates an atmosphere where some people think it’s no big deal to shoot up a park. They probably figure that no one who gets wounded or killed would be missed.

That’s the tragedy!

  -30-

Looking for a neighborhood market? Or is this just a political deal w/ payback?

By now, I’m sure anybody who cares has heard the “story” – the Whole Foods chain of supermarkets geared toward upscale items is planning to build a new store in the Englewood neighborhood (63^rd and Halsted streets, to be exact).

Will we soon see fliers like this on South Side?

Yes, the same Englewood that is one of the city’s lower-income neighborhoods – and often is the focal point of much of the urban violence that ideological idiots would have you think is taking place across all of Chicago.

THE PEOPLE WHO like the idea see the fact that people who live in that area have to go to some extremes in order to shop for groceries because of the fact that there really isn’t a full-scale supermarket in the area.

Those who hate the idea of Whole Foods say they don’t see the practicality of putting a food retailer whose image is centered around getting the business of upscale customers who want “elite” (allegedly) versions of products in a neighborhood where there would be higher percentages than usual of people relying on LINK cards.

Which, by the way, Whole Foods officials made a point of saying this week that they DO accept.

Personally, I find the latter attitude to be just a bit snotty – almost as though they’re saying certain people aren’t worthy of having a Whole Foods near them. These are the ones who’d rather have the Food4Less chain (an offshoot of the Kroger Co.), because it better fits their image of what Englewood “deserves.”

NONETHELESS, I’M SKEPTICAL over whether Whole Foods will gain much in the way of customer support when the store is finally built (right by the Kennedy-King College campus).

I actually live within a 10-minute drive of a Whole Foods store. Personally, it strikes me as the place where I might go occasionally to pick up a few specialty items if I’m planning to make a special dish or two.

They also do have some vegetable items in their produce section that aren’t readily stocked in the Jewel Foods store that is located one block from where I live.

But I can’t help but think that anybody who does all of their grocery shopping at a Whole Foods is someone so pretentious about themselves and wanting to buy into the store’s upscale image. They definitely have too much money to waste.

PERSONALLY, I WONDER what Whole Foods is getting out of the deal?

Although I couldn’t help but notice the Chicago Sun-Times story Thursday about the $10 million subsidy city government will provide Whole Foods to help prepare the site for store construction.

Municipal governments routinely offer up such deals to businesses of any size that want to locate within their boundaries. In and of itself, the subsidy isn’t unusual.

But it makes me wonder if the developers who are bringing Whole Foods to the Englewood neighborhood are counting on some sort of political good-will from city officials.

BRING THIS STORE to one of the city’s “food deserts” and help make it look as though the Emanuel Administration is doing something to benefit the inner-city to make it easier for its residents to shop for groceries (believe it or not, they eat too).

In return, it would seem that those developers can now call in a favor or two – perhaps some easier approval for a future project that they will want to build somewhere within Chicago.

So what do I really think about the concept of Whole Foods coming to Englewood? It would be nice if the store can help residents of that South Side neighborhood get access to better food. Maybe it could even help bolster the surrounding neighborhood.

But the political cynic in me can’t help but wonder about that payback. What future project will get greased through the system because of the Whole Foods willingness? And how much of a stinker will that future deal be?

  -30-

Crime occurs anywhere

The one thing I have learned more than anything else from a quarter century of being a reporter-type person is that crime can occur anywhere.

There’s no getting away from it. Stupid, bizarre, hostile, hateful acts cannot be hidden from. It’s not just a product of the Englewood neighborhood – which is what one might want to believe after hearing the day’s latest testimony in the trial of the man accused of crimes in connection with the death of actor Jennifer Hudson’s mother.

WHICH IS WHY a pair of crime stories from Thursday managed to catch my attention.

A part of me suspects that the people who live in the West Rogers Park neighborhood on the far northern edge of Chicago (up against Evanston) think they’re immune to what some would like to think of as the miseries of urban life.

Or maybe they think that living so far north puts them far away from South Side life.

Yet the Chicago Tribune had an account of a jewelry store robbery on Devon Avenue with a twist – the robber didn’t get away because the store owner managed to get his pistol and shoot the would-be robber in his left hip.

THE STORE OWNER had his pistol confiscated by police, but he’s not facing any weapons-related charges. The robber, once he recovers from his bullet wound, will face an armed robbery charge.

It seems that in this particular robbery, the store owner’s wife and two grand-daughters were present, and the would-be robber even snatched some cheap jewelry (a butterfly necklace and a purse) from the 4-year-old grand-daughter.

It seems this robber was snatching at anything that had any potential for value – even the junk jewelry that a young child might wear just for fun.

In one way, this robbery had an element from the past – the image of an elderly store owner with a pistol located within easy reach of one of his hands. No high-tech security systems for this particular store.

YET ON THE other hand, the store had security cameras, and the would-be robber was sophisticated enough (even though when you really think about it, any robber or burglar is nothing more than a thug) to remember that fact.

At the moment he was shot, the Chicago Tribune says the man was messing around with a computer to try to deactivate the surveillance video.

Erase the evidence. Take it with him, along with that butterfly necklace that probably would have made him the laughingstock of the pawn shop world when he tried to “cash in” his ill-gotten prizes.

And I’m sure this store owner will gain some friends from the people who are just a little too eager to own firearms, since the Tribune reported that the man tried explaining to his grandchildren about the incident that, “not all guns are bad.”

IT’S JUST TOO bad that the man’s other dream (that his granddaughters will be capable of forgetting this incident someday) is not likely to come true. Because crime really is something that can happen anywhere.

Anywhere even includes the South Side neighborhoods, although it amazes me the way some people perceive the Bridgeport neighborhood – the one that has figured out how to maximize its political influence on account of the fact that so many mayors and so many Daleys grew up there.

Although the current resident of that famed house in the 3500 block of South Lowe Street is Patrick Daley Thompson (the Daley nephew and grandson), who later this year will take his seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District board.

Yet the Chicago Police Department had its attention focused on Thursday two blocks to the east – on Parnell Avenue, to be exact.

A 25-YEAR-OLD MAN’S body was found in an alley in that block with a gunshot wound to his head.

Police didn’t identify the man right away, nor did they know up front who did the shooting – or why!

In fact, there is the potential that this will become yet another of the many shootings that take place so often that one tends to blend into another in just about every place possible.

It’s not just limited to the Englewood neighborhood.

  -30-

These crazy weekends of violence also are a part of the character of Chicago

Chicago lost at least nine residents Sunday as part of one of the most unfortunate aspects of the city’s character – the occasional outbursts that take place in some of the less visible neighborhoods of our city.

We didn’t have a mass murder or severe accident take place. What we’re talking about is one of those weird convergences that results in a few incidents taking place almost at the same time that throw our city’s crime rate out of whack.

WHAT ALWAYS GETS to me about these weekends, when they occur, is that the incidents are limited to the same neighborhoods. It’s as though we are too accepting of the fact that some people have to live their lives in fear of violence.

By comparison, there also are other neighborhoods where the thought of one violent crime taking place within the local boundaries would be considered a crime wave of historic proportions.

Somebody dies in Englewood? That’s just the way things are. A shooting in Sauganash? That concept is so alien – I don’t know the last time that Sauganash on the Northwest Side had a slaying.

I do know that Englewood on the South Side was one of three neighborhoods where incidents took place that involved people being shot. It was a neighborhood that had multiple incidents. It is part of the reason that the Chicago Tribune reported 7 shot in Chicago on Sunday – then had to use the website Monday morning to update two more people who got shot in the final two hours of the day.

NINE PEOPLE.

That is not a typical Chicago weekend – no matter how much some people who weren’t fortunate enough to be born and raised here want to think so, we don’t get constant mayhem in all corners of Chicago.

In fact, the number of incidents has declined significantly since the days when I was a reporter-type person for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago. Back in the late 1980s, I can recall a city that averaged 2.5 murders per day, and where the “violent weekends” could easily see 20 or so people get killed.

By comparison, only two of the nine people who were shot Sunday wound up dying. That almost makes it sound like this was a not-so-untypical weekend after all. Except that there is something rather wrong about having to think about such violence as being the “norm” that we live with.

NOW I AM not naïve. I realize that whenever one lives in a place with so many people concentrated in one spot, there are going to be more outbursts than one would see if one lives in a place with few people. In short, small-town life.

That concept is just too isolated for me, and I would guess for many of you people who identify with the city of Chicago. So I suppose it does come down to being one of urban life’s trade-offs – albeit one that is sad.

So for those people whose view of Chicago gets restricted to the north lakefront, my point is to throw attention to the neighborhoods of Englewood, Lawndale and Little Village. The latter usually gets its annual moment of attention on or about May 5 when city officials hold the official local Cinco de Mayo celebration.

The other two neighborhoods usually only get their annual moment of glorification on this day when they are the scene of the violent outbursts that some people sarcastically like to think are the evidence of the coming of nice weather.

AFTER ALL, IF people who live in these neighborhoods aren’t cooped up inside anymore to escape the cold, it is only natural they are going to behave badly.

I hope the sarcasm with which I repeat that attitude comes through in full. Because that’s the kind of negative attitude that I’d like to think is unbecoming of our city.

But it is with an attempt of drowning out such a negative attitude that I bring up the names Jerel Love and Amos Dailey Jr. I have never written about either man before, and now I will never get a chance to write about either again. Neither one made it out of their 20s age-wise.

What makes them significant is they are the two men who were shot Sunday night, and were pronounced dead at about 10:30 p.m. Sunday. The Chicago Tribune reported that police think the two men were shot while sitting inside a car as some sort of act of retribution for a streetgang-related incident.

OF COURSE, LOVE’S sister claims he was not a gang member, and in fact worked to try to keep young people out of streetgangs. Which means there probably is no logical reason for what happened Sunday night.

Not that there was any more logical reason for the shootings that took place in other neighborhoods around the city – which left people in conditions ranging from “good” to “serious.” So the next time one talks of the character of Chicago and starts focusing on the Hancock Building, we ought to remember this other, more sobering, part of the city character.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Many of the shootings that took place Sunday and left nine people either dead or injured (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/at-least-7-shot-in-city-on-sunday.html) seem so random, as though (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/2-found-shot-to-death-in-vehicle-on-west-side.html) stray gunfire just naturally flies through the Chicago skies looking for unaware targets.

Even public officials face violence

I remember back a couple of decades ago to an afternoon I spent as a reporter-type person with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, which on that particular day had me working at the Belmont Area detective bureau (the one on the site that Chicago old-timers think of as the site of Riverview Amusement Park).

I was checking on what turned out to be a pair of miniscule (from a news judgment standpoint, I’m sure the victim vividly remembers the incidents to this day) shootings that took place on the North Side.

SOMEHOW, THE CONVERSATION turned to the requirement that police officers be armed at all times (even when they were off the job). I recall one of the homicide detectives telling me, “I don’t take the trash out without wearing” his pistol.

Now I’m sure some people are going to read that anecdote and wonder why it is fair that a police officer can wear a pistol, but a so-called law-abiding citizen cannot. That is a topic for a different day (and no, I don’t support the concept of “concealed carry,” since I think too many people are likely to get excited and careless and overreact and shoot themselves).

But I couldn’t help but remember that cop who by now is retired and may well be living elsewhere other than Chicago (my uncle Mike who was a Chicago cop for a few decades retired to Arkansas) when I read accounts of a firefighter who was attacked in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the firefighter was found at about 4 a.m. on the sidewalk near Halsted and Dickens streets. He underwent surgery Wednesday morning at Illinois Masonic Medical Center, and officials said he was “in bad shape.”

I’M SURE AT his age (24), he probably was the foolishly fearless type who thought he could wander into any neighborhood and be safe. After all, he was a firefighter. If burning buildings weren’t about to take him down, why should he feel threatened walking through a neighborhood whose residents would like to think they are the elite of Chicago.

But the simple fact is that crime can happen to anyone, at anytime, and just about anywhere.

Perhaps the copper from the depths of my memory was merely ahead of his time in wearing his holstered pistol while walking out to the alley behind his home to take out the trash.

Now I know that some people are going to complain that too much attention is being given to this incident, or to a string of other crimes that have occurred in recent weeks in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

POLICE HAVE BEEN claiming that the individual incidents do not appear to be necessarily connected to each other. So it isn’t likely to be one person committing a batch of serial acts. It’s just likely the potential for violence that can break out anywhere – even in places where local residents thought they were immune.

By comparison, the numbers or types of incidents fall short of what some people are too willing to accept as just the routine way of life in certain inner-city neighborhoods, particularly if they were on the West or South sides of the city.

Think about it. How many of you who now are sympathetic toward that firefighter would be thinking to yourself “he was an idiot to be walking around out there” if the incident had happened at 63rd Street and Stewart Avenue – the heart of the Englewood neighborhood?

Things like this can happen anywhere. I couldn’t help but notice the Tribune newspaper website’s other “big” story for Wednesday – it seemed like too perfect a pairing to go along with the attacked firefighter.

I’M TALKING ABOUT the attacked mayor.

No, not Richard M. Daley. He, after all, has his security detail that recently went so far as to help capture one of three men who escaped from an Indiana state prison when that man happened to wander into the town where the Daley family has their summer cottage.

It was Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett who got beaten up when he threatened to call police to break up an incident involving a man who was beating up an older woman at the Wisconsin State Fair.

Trying to do “the right thing” got him a few punches and scrapes on his upper lip and cheek, along with the national attention of being a public official whose layers of security were not enough to keep him immune from the potential for violence that we all confront in life – even if some of us are in denial and want to think we can hide from it.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: A firefighter is trying to recover from a beating he took in what is supposed (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/08/police-investigate-lincoln-park-beating.html) to be one of Chicago’s elite neighborhoods.

Even a mayor can become (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/08/milwaukee-mayor-to-talk-about-beating.html) a crime victim, particularly when he leaves his security detail at home.