The deadliest month
July is the killing month in Chicago. More people are killed in July, on average, than in any other month. Now we will see just how effective Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s new police strategies really are. Now we will see just how willing and brave the good men and women who live in Chicago’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods really are.
Will they come out of their houses on these hot days and nights and stand together? Will they defend their neighborhoods, by their mere watching presence, block by block?
It’s the only way. The cops can’t do it alone.
“If we think the violence is going to stop because of police deployment in our neighborhoods, we are idiots,” says the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who led an antiviolence march through Chicago’s South Side Friday evening. “People say they’re afraid they might become a target — and they’re right, if only one person steps up. But if 20 people come out on the block, there is no target.”
In the first five months of this year, homicides in Chicago dropped a remarkable 34 percent over the same period last year. The decline coincided with — and likely was significantly because of — a smart new policing strategy in which as many as 400 officers a day, working overtime, are assigned to just 20 small but highly dangerous zones, some zones as small as just a couple of blocks.
It’s an expensive strategy, and who knows where Emanuel will find the money to keep it up. But it’s an honest approach to policing that recognizes Chicago doesn’t have a major crime problem — certain corners, blocks and neighborhoods do — and saturation policing is an effective response.
Still, as Pfleger and others, including the mayor, often say, it’s not enough. Fighting crime also is a matter of creating more jobs and better schools, stemming the flow of guns and promoting better parenting.
Most of all, as clichéd as this may seem, it’s a matter of neighbors helping neighbors.
“You can’t change violence in the whole city, but you can change it on your block,” says Pfleger, who has been leading anti-violence campaigns for decades. “They say we’re in a war, and in a war you need boots on the ground. Well, be the boots on the ground.”
July is coming. And June — Chicago’s secondbiggest month for homicides — already is here.