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“Austin [Chicago] is the city’s largest community area geographically, and was the most populated for 45 years,” chicagotribune.com reports. “But as the West Side neighborhood’s gun violence has increased, so too has families’ realization that at any moment the shootings can creep into their blocks — even the good blocks. Austin’s residents are leaving, with some saying goodbye to the place they’ve called home their entire lives.”

No surprise there. Question: is the “gun violence” plaguing the Windy City neighborhood the cause of the problem or a symptom?

The Trib article lands firmly on the side of a symptomatic analysis. It chronicles the ‘hood’s death spiral, fingering red lining, rapacious real estate agents, sub-prime mortgages, poverty, the collapse of the housing market and under-resourced schools.

It highlights only one governmental “solution”: the introduction of the much-maligned (in these parts) ShotSpotter gunfire detection system.

The standard answer to Austin and the like: taxpayer investment! As residents who can afford to leave are skipping town, that approach strikes me as nothing more than throwing good money after bad.

Although “gun violence” is a symptom of a dying neighborhood, I reckon it’s the highest of high priorities. The answer starts with drug legalization (as if), armed self-defense, better policing and, most important of all, reforming the judicial system.

Chicago’s revolving door justice system keeps bad guys on the streets. Remove them, give residents’ breathing space, and the neighborhood will heal. Slowly, mind you, and depending on economic circumstances. (If there are no jobs anywhere nearby, the process is doomed.)

Your take?

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107 COMMENTS

  1. My solution? I moved to a place with no “bad neighborhoods” and plenty of people carrying a gun for self defense. For some strange reason, we have almost zero actual crime here.

    • That essentially what I have done,in a nutshell. I would rather be a poor man in rich town, than a rich man in a poor town.

    • It’s interesting to hear people say the gun free zone city residents should move.
      But when you tell the gun free zone state residents to move many people get offended.
      I decided to not return to California at the time of my military retirement. We still live in a free country. You leave when ever you want to.
      It would help if the state residents stopped voting for “free stuff” just like the city residents do.

    • This.

      Also end the “Un Fair Housing Act”, restore property rights, and the right to associate.

      You want to be a gang banger, drug user? Fine, you will be one some where else…Where? I do not know nor care.

  2. It’s certainly not my area of expertise, but it seems to me that no amount of after-school programs, rec centers and community gardens, by themselves, are going to save a neighborhood. To me it seems like ultimately, you need widescale participation by the people that live in these bad areas. They have to be willing to change their neighborhood, which also means changing certain negative aspects of their “culture”, chief among them being the “no snitchin'” mantra, and refusing to accept open lawlessness.

    Plenty of good folks live in bad neighborhoods. But in line with the old saying, evil triumphs when good people do nothing. However, I guess ultimately, like with many societal problems, we just need to throw more money at it!

    • I once had a conversation with some guys who lived in my apartment building. They were telling me about how bad the neighborhood they grew up in was. They said something about frequent and random drive by shootings. I responded that I couldn’t live in a neighborhood like that. They nodded in agreement, thinking I meant I wasn’t tough enough or something. I went on to say that after someone shot my house, I’d be on the porch emptying a 30 round magazine into their fleeing car. They looked at me like I was kidding or just full of it. My friends responded that I wasn’t.

      Neighborhoods get bad because the people their allow it to happen, often for good reasons. The neighborhoods usually don’t go bad over night. It takes a long time. The good people living their just give up and leave because they can. They aren’t willing to take matters into their own hands because they fear the cops more than the criminals. They aren’t willing to cooperate because they know the cops can’t do enough to keep anyone who cooperates safe.

      • And then a bunch of people would come to your house and kill you and your family. You wouldn’t be scaring anyone by shooting at them.

        • I wouldn’t be attempting to miss or scare them, and there is a reason I said I couldn’t live in a neighborhood like that. I was young, poor, and single at the time. Which is the sort of person who often resorts to violence (soldiers, gang members, revolutionaries) because they don’t have enough to lose to stop them from doing so.

          If somebody is threatening me, my natural response is to be proactive. Unfortunately, proactive responses are usually illegal.

        • TX_Lawyer,

          Unfortunately, proactive responses are usually illegal.

          While they may be illegal, they are quite often HIGHLY effective.

        • And that tribe has been known to view brutal violence in response to physical threats from racist organizations as great sport. It’s also known for having many members in military and law enforcement. It’s also big into hunting.

      • It’s not always even that simple. Gangbangers and other criminals aren’t viruses that just pop up overnight- they’re a cancer that develops. The kid in that gang grew up on the corner. People know him. People in the neighborhood know ALL the bangers. When they pull a shooting, the neighborhood throws up its hands, demands ‘action’ and wonders why it’s happening.

        …but then doesn’t turn in the guy who was driving. Not JUST because they’re afraid- although that might be part of it. But because he’s one of them. At least compared to the police, the media, the mayor that lives so far away that he can’t even smell the hood…

        • Like I said, I couldn’t live in that kind of neighborhood. In my neighborhood, there is a family that parks their cars so as to block the view at an intersection. Someone called the cops on them. I don’t know who did it, but none of us other neighbors blamed them at all.

    • All gentrification does move the problem from one area to another. When you price a bunch of people out of a neighborhood, they’re not just going to jump off a bridge. They go elsewhere and bring their problems with them.

      • It still fixes the neighborhood. And while the neighborhood is transitioning back, it is likely to do many of the things Robert suggests in the two paragraphs preceding “Your take?”

        • I just see it as kicking the can down the road. Something that goes against my own moral code. Is it really a net gain if one city/neighborhood is fixed at the cost of the one a few miles down the road? Fix one, ruin another. Equation balanced?

        • If the problem members pick the wrong neighborhood, then it doesn’t ruin that neighborhood. For example, a lot of scum from New Orleans ended up in Houston after Hurricane Katrina. They continued to do scummy things. They were treated to a justice system that didn’t have a “revolving door.” People would call into radio shows shocked that the person who committed a crime was sent to prison instead of slapped on the wrist.

          If the gentrification process results in the problem people being taken out of the equation, then the equation will not be balanced. The problem is metropolises like Chicago where the next neighborhood is in the same jurisdiction, so the rising tide lifting all boats doesn’t drown any rats.

          The solution is to lock up the criminal element. It is usually a tiny fraction of the population in the bad neighborhood. The problem is that these Democrats will not do that because it’s “racist.”

        • a lot of southerners moved north for better jobs. and many of them vacation down south by wherever their family bloodlines moved from. some will move back, and hopefully, many will move out to the schaumburgs of the world and make the dopes who fled to heaven wonder why they left for hell. voucher or not.

      • It takes a certain amount of shitbags per capita to turn a neighborhood into a garbage dump. The question is: are we better trying to spread them out and hope they’re too far apart to reach critical mass, or are we better just letting them stay together so it’s concentrated?

        At this point, I guess the latter. Generally they’re burning their own communities down at least. Yeah, it’s costly for everyone in the long run, but I don’t see us having the real conversations about why the inner city culture is failing kids.

  3. Local control and self determination. Stop forcing outside solutions like gun control and social programs. Leadership needs to come organically from those communities not dictated from afar by professional politicians living and working in safe, rich areas.

  4. All of our problems in the US are ultimately the result of poverty, which is why it’s hopeless. The sun will expand to engulf the Earth before enough people agree on a workable solution to poverty to affect any sort of positive change.

    I don’t know if anyone else here has read Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, but it’s set in a future dystopia where the rich/poor divide is such that the wealthier citizens of the country live in gated corporate compounds while everything else in the nation (called the plebelands in the series) has degenerated into what Chicago is now. I see that future as an inevitability at this point.

    In short, nothing is going to change. Grab a bottle or three of bourbon and strap in. We’re in for a hell of ride.

    • No. Sorry, I can’t agree with you. First of all – there is no real poverty in US to be found. Our ‘poor’ live in houses, drive around in cars and are mostly overweight. They have cell phones, brand name (overpriced) shoes and clothes and spend lots of time and money at manicure and hair stylists.
      I used to live in Chicago for 7 years and I worked in those bad south and west neighborhoods. As home remodeller I had chance to see what’s going on up close and personally.

      Driving down most main streets there in the morning it feels like a ghost town. Empty sidewalks, only in front of liquor stores groups of zombies clutch their bottles in brown bags. Most people get up around noon. Soon you can see pattern to the businesses catering to local’s needs: liquor store, church, beautician, fast food, mani-pedi, liquor store, church, hair saloon…etc.

      Second – even this quasi-poverty is never a cause of criminality. (See miners out of work as result of war on CO2 – closing of coal mines.) It might be by-product or rather straight result of main problem.
      Main problem being culture of not finishing school, not working stable job, not marrying your baby’s momma. Generations on government support, dealing drugs, robbing, stealing and fighting competing gangs. ‘Cause doing otherwise is acting white!

    • Bullshit. “Oh, those damn selfish hard workig rich guys don’t want to give their hard earned money to these poor downtrodden lazy lackeys!”
      There is no real poverty to be found in US. Poor people don’t drive around in cars, talking to cell phones, wearing brand name sneakers. Poor people die of malnutrition, not of heart attack from being overweight. Food is so cheap here it’s almost impossible to starve.
      Even this quasi poverty is not reason of crime. It’s the result.

  5. the west side irish are long gone, and so are the manufacturing jobs that were once ubiquitous. the service industry remains, with minimum wage and no prospects for pensions or retirement. in that line of work you’ll be commuting to a melman family enterprise to have any hope.
    these neighborhoods are still filled with very solid brickpiles, many of them graystones, and an abundance of bungalows and two and three flats. although, some are still burnt out from the king riots because, you know, we’ll show them.
    the only “saving” will take place after current residents leave- some willingly (now) and some when urban renewal forces them out. more of these properties will become prime just as wrigleyville, bucktown, wicker park, ravenswood, lakeview, ukranian village, pilsen and many other formerly seedy enclaves have. these are thriving communities now, and the west sides immediate proximity to the loop and central business district are undeniable.
    either that or the whole town is goin’ down. i doubt it. too many stalwarts.

  6. “Question: is the “gun violence” plaguing the Windy City neighborhood the cause of the problem or a symptom?” This is a dumb question. Austin was poor before it was filled with guns. Violence and poverty go hand in hand. Only jobs are service industry jobs and there are 4 kids for every one of those.

    • It does seem that poverty is a precondition for endemic violence, but I don’t think it’s actually the cause.

      I grew up in a poverty-stricken area that was positively saturated with guns, but there was no violence and virtually no crime. There are all sorts of poor areas across the US that aren’t overrun by pistol-packing gangbangers.

      I see two crucial differences between my hometown and Chicago’s Austin neighborhood: a rural location and intact, strongly religious families. No, wait, there’s another one: it has never been taken over by “progressive” Democrats.

    • “Violence and poverty go hand in hand. Only jobs are service industry jobs and there are 4 kids for every one of those.”

      The sheer profundity of your false assumptions is breathtaking.

      Violence is an inner-city problem. Spend some time in the former coal mining areas of Appalachia, where the poverty is just as bad but the crime does not compare. To suppose that poverty causes crime is naive, and to suppose that poverty causes violence is willful ignorance.

      Where there is a correlation between crime and poverty, you wrongly assume that latter causes the former. Consider for a moment that it might be the other way around. When you spend your life making bad decisions, including dropping out of school and engaging in criminal behavior, poverty will become your life-long companion.

      Employers locate where there are employable people. Criminals aren’t the kind of people that make good employees, so employers tend to avoid high crime areas (for that and several other reasons).

      • There is plenty of violence in Appalachia now stack those folks on top of each other and see it skyrocket.

        • Other things you’ll find in Appalachia:
          Two-parent families and parents married to each other
          Relatively high rates of church membership and church attendance
          A belief in the need for education
          A basic respect for law enforcement

          Population density is one factor among many, and completely unrelated to an assertion that crime is caused by poverty.

      • A more correct statement is to say crime is of a different nature. Not violence or crime free. More property crimes, more domestic violence and more meth & heroin crimes.

    • “Violence and poverty go hand in hand.” Not true in many places in America and it is certainly not true globally. There are many places around the world whose denizens would love having the standard of living in the worst neighborhoods in America. Those people do not turn their communities into the depraved, violent hellscapes we see in our minority neighborhoods. Look deeper.

      • Ditto. Violence is not caused by fiscal state. Most of the world is not wealthy. They also lack our levels of crime.

    • on the sidebar is “western electric” which was literally a self contained city. it had it’s own employee housing and supplied virtually all goods and services access within it’s boundaries. austin was not a poor area, it was solid middle class employing tens of thousands of workers. and i would imagine that there were plenty of guns in the hands of the residents which no doubt included many returning from the last two wars of the era.

      and the pinks and the browns fought. with guns. back then. and the real estate agents cried “there goes the neighborhood.” and now they live in naperville. have some vouchers you spineless bitches.

      https://www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/

    • Austin, the hellhole, is right next to Oak Park, the still-successful trendy old-gentry neighborhood. Why does Oak Park have so much less crime than Austin? Could it be the legacy of the old Oak Park housing covenants? Keeping out dangerous residents yields a less dangerous neighborhood; alas, illegal now. Also, look at a map of Austin Blvd, boundary between the two neighborhoods. Oak Park has disconnected many of the streets leading into Austin, like a kind of moat to keep out the wheeled rabble.

    • Ooo I like that. I maintain friendly relations with my neighbors for that very reason. I don’t have to be best friends with them, but we’re neighbors, so we speak when we see each other, help when needed, and keep an eye on each others homes as well.

      • Exactly. It is a simple phrase but if you know your neighbors at least well enough to acknowledge that their well being is connected to your own you have effectively created a neighborhood. Without it you only have a hood.

      • Hmm. I lived in a rural neighborhood where I didn’t even know the names of all the people next door. Still turned out alright because, surprisingly, we all mostly wanted to be left alone and acted like adults.

  7. I have been in EVERY neighborhood in Chicago. While there are good people in the hood MOST will NOT turn in their uncle,son,niece,baby mama,daddy,cousins,grandkids or nephews. Filled with churches and few actually practice their religion. And vote for massa’ and plantation existence…

  8. Well, you have essentially two choices in such areas:

    1. Round up all the young males and put them preemptively into the prison system until those who survive turn 35

    — OR —

    2. Get rid of all welfare programs for able-bodied adults, giving them no other option except to take responsibility for their lives if they enjoy eating

    Neither option seems particularly likely in modern America.

  9. Pretty standard liberal policy-making. Describe a problem and its root causes in semi-intelligible terms and then surprise everyone with a solution that’s totally non sequitur to the issue just described.

  10. There is no hope. We’ve been holding out hope for a hundred years since The Great Migration, and nothing has gotten better. In fact, things are much worse.

    Stop throwing good money after bad and let “bad” neighborhoods destroy themselves. The good people who live there — and there are many — will find a way to move on.

    • This.
      America is an codependent relationship with these folks. We give, they take. Think about how we are ruining EVERY American’s pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness with more and more restrictive laws made because a small minority misbehaves but the rest of us are collectively punished. Think of the trillions collected in confiscatory taxes pissed away on welfare and entitlement payments whose recipients continue to demand, “More, you racist, more!”
      And, oh yeah, they loath us. They have managed to find the time between the crime and cashing checks to make exclusive forms of history, music, and literature expressly hating America, portraying it as the greatest evil in the world. We need to divorce these people.

  11. What is the one consistent factor in any poor, violent neighborhood? It’s not race, religion or ethnicity – it’s single-parenthood. When 80%+ of children born into these communities are illegitimate with no father in sight, is it any wonder that gangs proliferate?

    I honestly don’t know how you stop illegitimacy, but I do know that 50 years of Johnson’s (not-so) “Great Society” did a great job of tearing families apart. Maybe start by dismantling the welfare state?

    • I think you do know. You answered your own question with the correct answer.
      Society can handle OOW births in the 25% range. At 50%-75%+, the community can’t self correct. Add to that that they are concentrated into public housing, how can you not have a high crime area?

  12. In the context of good people doing nothing, Major Tom and I were discussing what I said I would do (when I was young and stupid) if someone shot up my home. (Respond with as much violence as I could, basically).

    It reminded me of the a quote form a book about how “it’s not so easy to tree and American town.” I tried googling the expression to find an example of the results of attempts to tree a town. Turns out most gangs that tried that back in the old west ended up mostly dead or captured.

    The blog I was reading had this apropos sentence: “There is simply no record of a town being held by outlaws. Well, except modern Chicago and some other places run by Democrats, that is another story, though.”

    If citizens are allowed to have and use firearms in self defense, the problem of violent crime solves itself pretty quick, especially if people were good neighbors. The problem in America in general, and places like Chicago specifically, is that Americans aren’t allowed the freedom to have firearms and are punished for using them.

    • In addition, you can actually see some conflicts escalate into shootings (if you watch the right social media). That’s why programs like the Interrupters have proven somewhat effective. However, no one wants to fund them.

    • It’s not so much that these people can’t get guns (although some places make it harder and more expensive than others). The bigger issue is that the people in these inner cities have this idea burned into their brains by their Democrat overlords that guns are bad. If you believe that guns are the cause of your problems, and I would wager that the majority of the people in these crime-ridden crapholes do, then you aren’t going to take the necessary steps to protect yourself, or your neighbors. And so they continue to live as victims, not knowing the keys to their shackles are easily within their reach, if only they were willing to make the necessary changes.

      • I think that is true, but I think that all the barriers put between the poor and firearms ownership in places like Chicago are often prohibitive to the most poor and vulnerable. Then the use of firearms in self defense is often heavily punished in these jurisdictions.

  13. “The answer starts with drug legalization”

    Credibility shot. No need to read another word. From a truth in advertising standpoint, you should have put that line at the top, maybe even in the title, and spared us the waste of time.

    • We have spent well in excess of $1T, since the moronic ‘war on drugs’ was launched decades ago.(Much of that from when a billion dollars was real money.)

      What do we have to show for it?

    • You can actually draw a pretty consistent line correlating with the ‘war on drugs’ and homicide rates in the inner-city.

      Now, that doesn’t mean it’s causation, but it’s worth more than dismissal.

  14. What To Do About Dangerous Neighborhoods? Well first off, they need to post large signs that say… “No Guns Allowed”, or “No Drive-bys Permitted”, because as well know—that’s precisely how you get that activity to stop.

  15. OK, I won’t write a book here, or at least I’ll try not to.

    The first thing to realize about these neighborhoods is that 95% of the people trying to “fix” them have never lived in one. “Community Organizers”, politicians and activists generally don’t come from a hard scrabble gang infested neighborhood and therefore know exactly fuck all about how they work and what needs to be done. I don’t pretend to be an expert on “da hood” but I’ve lived in some pretty shitty places and this is what I have observed:

    This is a multifaceted problem which requires an understanding of a few things and a cohesive multi-pronged approach to attacking the problem. These solutions will not be “politically popular” because they require the acknowledgement of some hard truths.

    1) The people living in these places and acting “wild” really are reacting rather rationally to how they perceive their environment. They are, in many cases, difficult to talk to and motivate because they lack hope for the future. It’s very difficult to take a kid and get them amped up about going to college and getting a job when they expect to be dead or locked up in the near future.

    2) Most of the people in these neighborhoods, whether they engage in some criminal activity or not, are generally good people. They fear the gangs and they distrust the police for, from their point of view, some pretty rational reasons.

    3) This isn’t a race issue. It’s a hardcore criminal issue. The color of their skin is immaterial. Yes, there will be some “disparate impact” but that’s the breaks of the game at this point.

    So, with that out of the way the prongs:

    1) Serious educational reform. I can’t prove causation but I note a distinct correlation between shitty schools and violent neighborhoods. This could be a book in and of itself and I’m not going to get into the weeds but K-12 education sucks in general and really sucks in certain parts of the country. That needs to be fixed.

    2) The hardcore criminals need to get locked the fuck up for a long time. This gives the community some breathing space and allows kids to grow up without being sucked into/forced into/coerced into the gang lifestyle.

    3) Combined with #2 yes, drug law reforms need to happen. Sorry tea totalers but it’s true. Drugs make the gangs truck loads of tax-free money. Removing that ability will cut them off at the knees. It will slash their funding, kill their recruitment and bring the whole business out of the shadows and into the light of taxes and regulation (Did I just say that?!). This is an area of public policy where there is no “good” or “great” solution. There is only the “less bad” option and it’s time to pick that up and run with it. Prohibition doesn’t work. If you’re gonna argue that it does you’re 84 years behind the times. Get your shit together dinosaurs.

    4) Relations with LEO’s need to be improved. That’s part and parcel of #2 and #3. Cops have a problem with prosecutors let dangerous thugs off with a slap on the wrist and the “snitches get stitches” attitude prevails. Good folks will not help LEO’s until they know that when they drop the dime on Violent Dumbfuck #3871 that Mr. VD 3871 is going away and not coming back. They also need to know that VD3876 and VD3923 are not going to come a fuck with them for ratting out VD3871. Further, they tend to get pissed when LEO’s roust the neighborhood kids over a dime bag of pot while letting the gangsters seemingly roam free. The “low hanging fruit” issue is a real problem here. It breeds distrust. It’s time to start ignoring the race card and start prosecuting the ever-living fuck out of violent criminals.

    5) The incentive structure for broken homes needs to be fixed. Call it “Welfare Reform” or whatever you want but the current system incentivizes bad behavior and single parenthood. I’m not shitting on the hard working single mom’s and dad’s out there, you’re the salt of the Earth. However, the people cranking out kids with multiple baby daddies are not doing their kids a favor. This tomfuckery combined with the other problems in these neighborhoods currently creates a never ending stream of recruits for gangs. When you’re 15, living in a broken home and you’ve got younger brothers and sisters living in poverty and you’re offered the choice of working at McD’s or slinging dope you will choose to sling dope. You just will. It’s simply too lucrative. Even if you don’t have the broken home situation it’s very likely that you’ll choose to sling drugs or get involved in other gang-related crimes because, well, you’re a dumbass 15 year old kid with no guidance, no educational opportunities and they’re offering you stacks of cash money that most middle class people don’t have.

    6) Again with that “hope” thing. (Like Obama or a Star Wars movie). This relates to everything I’ve said so far. It’s not possible to get a kid interested in education and “the future” when they don’t expect to live very long or not get locked up. The whole damn cycle needs to be broken so that these kids can get into schools where they actually personally invest in their own future rather than just trying to party as hard as they can until they get shot or arrested.

    That’s just MHO on the situation. None of it will ever happen though. There’s too many votes and too much money tied up in keeping shit the way that it is. Until the country, and especially certain sectors of the Left start telling people like Jessie and Al to fuck the hell off things are not going to get better.

    • Fantastic assessment. The only problem I see with it, is that it contains solutions that are not politically “correct” or popular.

      • Correct solutions for difficult problems are very rarely popular or PC. That’s why the problems never get fixed. We take the path of least resistance and “getting outraged” over hard solutions to difficult problems is a way we avoid doing the work required to fix the difficult problems.

        For example: it’s not PC, nor “popular” to tell a Type 2 Diabetic who’s 350lbs “Hey, you’re a fat slob, get to the gym and put in the work so your A1C will drop to healthier levels and, if you do it right, you won’t need meds any more. Your problem isn’t medication, it’s that you’re a lazy fat fuck who needs to get their shit together and stop committing slow motions suicide”. however in the vast majority of cases those statements are true.

    • “Most of the people in these neighborhoods, whether they engage in some criminal activity or not, are generally good people.”

      amen.

      “…and they’re offering you stacks of cash money…”

      i agree that this choice will almost always be made, but it will be for the status, not the cash. the big dough is reserved for whomever climbs on top of the heap.

      • I should clarify that I’m not talking about the people who “climb the criminal ladder”. Slinging drugs, even small time for a gang can often result in hundreds of dollars a day in the dealer’s pocket and add up over the course of a month to more than most middle class people make in a month from a legit paycheck. In some cases it’s even more profitable.

        Compare that cash flow to your average American who lives off credit. A recent (2016) Federal Reserve study showed that 46% of law abiding and gainfully employed Americans cannot come up with $400 cash to cover an emergency expense. To a low level weed dealer $400 in profit is an afternoon of lounging on the couch. Sell crack, meth, heroin or pills and the profit margin is higher and the customer base is dedicated.

        That’s the comparison I’m making. Middle class folks often live off credit and have poor cashflow. Dealers have great cashflow. No, they don’t make the big, big, big bucks but they live well.

        A guy I know put himself through a nice private college education selling pot. He paid his own tuition up front and in full every semester, so he was making at least $35K/semester selling marijuana.

        • And that income is all under the table, so they are also getting somewhere between $20-40K in government aid all while paying no taxes.

  16. In Chicago the root cause is the symbiotic relationship between gangs and aldermen. The pols rely on the gang leaders to deliver votes and in return they protect the gangs from effective law enforcement, not that Chicago has any, as shown by the abysmal clearance rate of homicides compared to other large cities like NYC or LA. Apparently too many years of “solving” crime by torturing random people into confessions has destroyed the Chicago PD’s ability to actually investigate, plus they have destroyed any trust and cooperation by their history of violence and corruption.

  17. You folks need to worry about the meth problem in your trailer parks and heroin problem in your suburbs. No one in Chicago is asking for your help.

    • If they can fix their own problems without assistance then they fucking well should.

      While they’re at it maybe they can stop using their own stupidity, selfishness and laziness as a reason why the rest of us should give up our rights to help them fix their fucked up city.

      Back to reality…

      At some point you take away the keys from a drunk. The whole of Illinois is rapidly sliding into that category where the rest of us are going to tell them what to do, and make them do it, because they can’t or won’t do pretty much anything correctly on their own. Maybe they won’t ask for help, but they’ll whine like school girls with the wrong sized thong when S&P and Moody’s downgrade them to junk bond status and the whole state goes tits up.

    • Deal. 🙂 So happy we are all over this whole insipid white guilt thing. Also I want my taxes lowered. Because I’m tired of being a involuntary surrogate daddy.

  18. Declare martial law, shelter in place and go door to door with a search and confiscate every weapon being held by gang members, you know like the illegal searches people undergo every day flying in the name of “public safety”

    • Hate TSA? Feel free to fly charter and avoid the hassle. Of course then you risk being the next Buddy Holly or a long list of others.

  19. Appalachia is approximately 98.5% white, and quite poor. The overall crime rate throughout Appalachia is about two thirds the national average, and the rate of violent crime is half the national average.

    Poverty may contribute to crime, and poverty is certainly a great excuse for crime, but culture determines criminality. Culture. And inner-city culture is a cancer.

    Meanwhile, the left wing media perpetuate horror stories about poor country people while glamorizing vicious inner city gangs.

  20. Crime is up Denver and Seattle after drug legalization. Crime is up in California since drugs have been decriminalized. Crime in the inner city has nothing to do with drugs. It is caused by the disintegration of the family and the loss of civil society. Until you fix that gangs will rule the streets.

    • Agree on disintegration of family and society. However, there is no “fixing it” from the outside. Maybe the problem is self correcting. You know, survival of the fittest. Fittest does not automatically mean the most barbaric/strong/dominant. In modern society, fittest means the ability to adapt. Killing each other in record numbers is not adapting, it is cultural suicide.
      So, my answer to the title “What To Do About Dangerous Neighborhoods?” is nothing at all except stay out of and away from them. Don’t go there. Don’t support them. Don’t do anything. Nature (and man is part of nature despite what many think) is self correcting. She just has a longer time line than most humans.
      This is not MY problem. Leave it alone, it will work out the way it is supposed to. To think I can “fix it” would be arrogant of me.

    • tdiinva is correct.

      When you have few stable families, society will not be civil. When society is not civil, whoever is the strongest and most ruthless — violent criminal gangs — will take over.

      Note: even if most families are stable and healthy, unless they are willing to be strong and (to a degree) ruthless in their own right, criminal gangs will still take over.

      Chicago is in desperate need of both stable families and families who are willing to be strong and ruthless.

    • “Crime is up Denver and Seattle after drug legalization.”

      “Crime is up Denver and Seattle after drug legalization after all those damn Californians and homeless people moved here”.

      FTFY.

  21. How about prosecuting people when they hurt others to the fullest extent possible instead of letting them out on probation/parole/bail where they can hurt others again? How about having people in the community acknowledge that these aren’t good people, and they’re about “justice reform” yet wouldn’t want a lot of these people living anywhere near them.

    This goes for everyone, not just common hood thugs. If you’re a dirty cop, executive, politician etc. you should be doing time too. I don’t care about all the “good work” your foundation/company/government etc. has done, you’re still a piece of trash.

  22. Several 1 gallon cans of gas and a like number of traffic flares = Urban Renewal… If that to severe for you then I guess you just give up and move. The government doesn’t care. The cops can’t stop the bad shit when the prosecutors and the judges make deals that let the scum off easy. The libs and the media scream injustice. If the People don’t fix the problem no one else will. Always remember that Justice and the Law have very little to do with each other when the system is rigged by lawyers, judges and politicians who play each side against the other. If you support doing what needs to be done to rid your neighborhood of the gangs and drug dealers. Band together and remember jury nullification when the time comes.

  23. I’m an incurable optimist. It’s my firm belief that, after Uncle Sugar hyperinflates his fiat currency and the EBT cards stop working, all of these problems will fix themselves within a few months. Of course, the process will not be pleasant, and you won’t want to be anywhere near any large American city while it’s in progress.

  24. All goes back to the creation of the modern welfare state which incentivized the destruction of the inner city family unit. Until you address the root cause, and subsequently save the taxpayer billions in the process, you will get nowhere.

  25. In 1991 LTC Jeff Cooper, he wrote in Guns & Ammo magazine that “no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition.”

    Grossman, Arnold. One Nation Under Guns: An Essay on an American Epidemic, Fulcrum Publishing, 2006 ISBN 9781555915575 (p. 65).

    Jump up ^ Vinzant, Carol. Lawyers, Guns, and Money:One Man’s Battle with the Gun Industry Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 ISBN 9781403966278 (p.21).

    I agree with him. The best way to fix the “bad” parts of any town is to ensure everyone has guns and plenty of ammunition. It will fix it self then. Get rid of the gun free zones.
    You don’t need rich gays or straights to come in and “help the people”. They have already caused enough problems for everyone in the cities.

    • Unfortunately, the dregs of our society don’t do anything efficiently, and that includes killing one another. If you examine the statistics on heyjackass.com, you’ll notice that only about 15% of those shot in Chicago die, and that the primary reason is poor shot placement. Of course, your idea might still be a good one, provided that you also abolish Medicaid and repeal the laws that require emergency rooms to provide free treatment to indigents. Guess who gets to pay the medical bills of the 85% of Chicago shooting victims who survive.

      • When good people with guns can be released from the gun free zones, they will take care of this problem. The bad guys with guns will have no place to hide.

        The inner cities are just a recreation of a small part of the old west. The difference is only the bad guys have guns.

  26. A number of you have said it and I will say it again in my words. As a requirement for ANY and ALL public doles, be it welfare, AFDC, food stamps, unemployment past 13 weeks, Medicaid, the recipient must, depending on its circumstances: accept remedial education, accept job training and take whatever job is offered, learn English, accept drug rehab, accept mandatory Norplant implantation if you are an unwed female of breeding age. All are given a choice. If you don’t want to participate, that is fine. You don’t get one cent of my money. If you live on the street, it is your choice. If you turn to crime, you are shot, whether by the storekeeper or the police. Up until the government SJW movement exploded in the 1900’s and 2000’s, this was life, since the beginning of civilization. Private SJW movements demanded participation by the recipients. Salvation Army, all the immigrant self-help groups. These movements worked. My God, even Communism demands something “from everyone according to his abilities” before they just give out free stuff “to everyone according to his needs.” As far as I can tell, only the Western SJW public welfare state gives out boxes full of candy and demands absolutely nothing (other than a vote for the Democratic party.) Short of another Depression and our own cultural revolution, because we simply can’t afford this crap any more, I don’t know how to get there. I do believe that the urban crime, unwed parenthood, gang, multi-generational poverty, and other associated problems would be cured in one generation, which in the ‘hood, seems to be about 15 years. There is nothing racial or racist in my comments. Same solution for the trailer parks. At the end of the reform, there have to be decent jobs and futures for people. For that I am somewhere between Trump and Sanders. Public works jobs to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure with minimum 51% US content. Tariffs on cheap garbage from China and elsewhere to encourage manufacturing here. Ending politically correct social indoctrination and replacing it with a modern version of the 3 R’s plus computer science. Yes, a logo T-shirt and a pair of shoes will cost more. You will have to keep your phone an extra year. But taxes will go down and the self-esteem of millions will go up as they finally see a chance to live better lives. And law-abiding gun-owners will not be made the scapegoats for gang violence.

  27. The problem is a bunch of people who wont take responsibility for themselves or their actions, let alone watch out for their neighbors. If neighbors looked out for one another, gangs couldn’t take over a neighborhood in the first place.

    • Why would someone need to take responsibility when the socialist progressives will give you “free stuff??”

      The inner city is not the only ones. San Francisco is a great example. The city has a very large violence problem that the media cover up. Social media reports the truth about muggings assaults, and other anti-social activity in SF. But the white gays are happy they get “free stuff” and sex acts in public with the governments permission.
      The Socialist progressives are the ones maintaining local gun free zones.

  28. So far the general answer seems to be turn America back to Pre New Deal government and bring OCP & RoboCop to Chicago. Damn….

  29. Systematic poverty, lack of family structure and the conquered people/ occupying army relationship between police and communities will continue to guarantee violence.

  30. ” For the record, it’s my call. Dump everything you’ve got left on my pos. I say again, expend all remaining in my perimeter. It’s a lovely fucking war. Bravo Six out. ”
    -Captain Harris, (Platoon, 1986)

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