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Amy Campanelli (courtesy chicagotribune.com)

Cook County Public Defender Amy P. Campanelli thinks that a “war on guns” is a pointless exercise and says so in an opinion piece at chicagotribune.com. Well, not exactly. At no point in her editorial does Ms. Campanelli address civilian disarmament (a.k.a., gun control). Instead, she shoots down the idea that incarcerating residents who possess and/or use firearms illegally will stop “gun violence” in the Windy City. Like this:

A war on guns that focuses solely on punishment sounds like an easy fix, but it will fail just as did the war on drugs. Increasing prison terms while failing to address the causes of gun violence will serve only to, once again, demonize and incarcerate another generation of mostly young African-American and Latino men. An old adage states that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Following the same failed path will have the same failed results.

While I agree with Ms. Campanelli that a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of dead flesh, the Public Defender somehow forgets that Chicago’s gangs – “mostly young African-American and Latino men” – are responsible for bulk of Chicago’s current record-breaking firearms-related death toll.

There’s no reason that Chicago can’t address the causes of gang affiliation at the same time as putting the bad guys behind bars for a long, long time. Or is there?

Some suggest that mandatory prison terms are needed in order to strip judges of discretion at sentencing. But locking up everyone without consideration of his or her background or the facts of each case is fundamentally unfair. Discretion is necessary, since every person is different, as are the facts underlying every charged offense. Serving time in prison, in fact, often exacerbates the problem. Instead of rehabilitating, it often hardens individuals and sets them further back when they re-enter society.

Despite the inflammatory rhetoric, no one grows up wanting to shoot or kill. People from distressed communities have often endured horrific trauma in their lives, and make bad choices. Increasing minimum sentences will not stop violence; it will merely incarcerate one generation while another generation steps up and continues the violence.

Ms. Campanellis’ solution? “More police on the street,” “linking at-risk youth with neighborhood groups, such as CeaseFire,” “involving at-risk youth with mentors, treatment facilities, faith-based groups, community centers, job training and police-involved programs” and increasing employment opportunities.

As we’ve reported many times, CeaseFire — ex-cons as paid interventionists — and their ilk are an unaccountable scam perpetrated on the public purse. As for the rest, why not? Sure! But put the bad guys behind bars. Otherwise, fuhgeddaboutit.

Of course, you wouldn’t expect a public defender — especially one in Cook County — to argue for incarceration. But you’d hope that she’d come out of the closet for a war on gangs. That’s what’s needed.

But don’t hold your breath. They’re part and parcel of the Chicago political machine. Until that changes, nothing will.

 

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87 COMMENTS

    • The Nation needs a new style of incarceration for all violent offenders (firearm and otherwise). Huge concrete boxes with 100 foot high mile long slick concrete walls atop a ten foot deep solid concrete foundation. Mostly open air with inmates fed a minimal subsistence diet containing tranquilizers and saltpeter. No work, no exercise, lay around on mats watching Barney episodes played 24/7 on the surrounding walls. Serve full term to the day. Violence occurring within a unit would be punished by an immediate lobotomy.

      Politicians convicted of any felony would serve their sentences in the same facility.

    • Will the governor make this announcement while wearing animal skins & wielding a hatchet; “This is a brutal new society, and society needs rules!”

  1. I’d avoid using Chicago as a model of anything but a pre apocalypse dry run. Its like using Mad Max’s playbook for controlling gun violence.

    Better would be to step outside the few blocks of ChIraqO and base policy on a more realistic scenario. Anything less is just a movie script.

  2. I’d prefer an actual war one gangs. Just declare them domestic terrorist groups and then send in the National Guard with shoot on sight orders.

    • Yeah, we don’t need no stinkin’ Due Process or freedom of association. Let’s give the government the ability to declare undesirable groups “domestic terrorists” and kill ’em all. I’m sure that will never come back to haunt us…

      • The Bloods and Crips kill more people every year than ISIS.

        They are the textbook definition of domestic terrorist groups.

        • Actually, no, they ain’t. Both gangs have criminal profit as motivation, i.e. money. While there is no one single accepted USG definition of terrorism, nearly all definitions have politics/ideology as motivations, e.g. per 22 USC 2656f(d), terrorism is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” Timothy McVeigh and Bill Ayers were terrorists, Crips/Bloods are just criminal thugs. Words have meaning, so let’s not muddy the issue with politically-motivated bad terminology (e.g. “common sense gun control).

        • No – the Bloods and Crips do not kill more people than ISIS.
          No – murder does not make you a domestic terrorist.
          No – we’re not going to throw out the constitution because Pswerge is a ignorant bigot who thinks violence is the answer to everything that scares him (like black people).

          Yes – Its time for you to stop typing now.

        • Yeah… When you open up with yousa racis you’ve got nothing to contribute to the conversation. Now go suckstart a Glock and improve the human genepool.

        • ..Except when you actually ARE a flaming racist. Like when you suggest all young black males in Chicago should be “Shot on sight” by the National Guard if suspected of gang activity.

          Bro – you’re not seriously going to defend your position as not racist, are you? At least own it.

        • I don’t see the color of the ganbangers in question ever showing up anywhere in my posts…

          But please, keep projecting.

      • Yeah, pwrserge makes comments like this all the time. I’m assuming he actually thinks this would be a good idea.

        Personally I don’t want the military in the business of executing US citizens. I don’t expect pwrserge to grasp the subtle nuance of that policy, however.

        • Technically, the National Guard is not “the military”… They are the state militia that would normally be expected to deal with massive disturbances beyond the ability of the police to handle.

          We’re not talking about sending a MEU into Chiraq.

        • No Pswerge, you’re just advocating a Shoot-on-sight policy based on someone appearance and geographical location they live in, and the Police’s magical ability to “Know who these people are”.

          I guess we no longer have to wonder who among us would be the willing to load their own countrymen into the gas chambers – Pswerge is our man!

          You juvenile little coward… go ahead and keep digging. Try and justify your way out of open Fascism.

        • Yeah… Because I’m sure that the local police definitely don’t have a list of all known associates of these gangs. #fullretard It’s not like these clowns have tattoos with their gang affiliation…

          But please, keep stuffing that straw man.

    • Yawn. Fascists gonna Fascist – and as usual Pswerge is happy to lead the charge.

      Seriously dude. Stop talking. Shoot on sight for suspected gang members is a jack-booted theory so ludicrous it only proves that you’re an impulsive bigot who’s never lived in the inner city.

  3. “But locking up everyone without consideration of his or her background or the facts of each case is fundamentally unfair. ”

    Ms. Campaneli, that’s not the problem, the problem is Illinois doesn’t have the prison space to house the offenders, so intervention early in the criminal’s career , when it could make a difference doesn’t happen. Instead a serious crime where someone gets hurt has to happen first.

    • Illinois doesn’t have prison space? Bullcrap.

      Illinois Democrats don’t have the political will to put violent predatory offenders in prison where they belong. It upsets their voter base.

      Illinois has closed a number of prisons in the past few years.

      • They may have physical prison space, but since the state is beyond bankrupt and can’t afford to operate them, they may as well not exist.

  4. So I’ve been reading a bit about lead in IL and Chicago. Apparently for generations plants (now long closed) have been dumping their lead heavy waste all over the city and paving, planting or building over it.

    I imagine generations of lead poisoning mostly in the poorer neighborhoods hasn’t been good for the families living there.

    Chicago may very well be loaded to the brim with individuals sporting want > take.

    If this is the case the inhabitants should be hospitalized and those sections of Chicago should be superfund sites quarantined until decontaminated and no amount of prohibition, legislation or feel-good social servicing will help these people. They are now effectively a different species of homo sapien. Morlocks even.

    This will also be Detroits fate.

  5. How many who comment here have actually been in the blighted hoods of Chiraq? It cannot be fixed. It can only be contained,controlled,punished…and bulldozed. Cesspool is too kind?

    • I think those of use who have more than a passing familiarity with those wretched hives of scum and villainy realize that sending in the National Guard would be a mercy.

      • So in this National Guard plan of yours, do you imagine that the gangs are going to form up into regiments and fight them in the streets? Or might they just scatter like roaches and wait until the NG leaves?

        • Go house to house, street to street in an organized sweep. We know who these scumbags are, you flush them out and round them up.

        • Since the term “Chiraq” is being bandied about here can we call using the NG “The Serge”?

          Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’ll go sit in the corner now.

        • Yeah, because suspicion is basically the same thing as a Felony Conviction via a trial by Jury, right? Who needs that due process bullshit anyways?

          BTW Pswerge, I’ve decided your comments are suspicious. The National guard will be on their way to “Shoot on sight” as you suggested, because hey, who needs due process?

        • Did you miss how most of these scumbags already have numerous felony convictions?

          But please, I’m sure if you shout “yousa racis” loud enough, it will totally change the fact that your pet hoodrats are destroying American society.

        • 1 – You are very, very, very wrong. You called for a “Shoot on sight” policy by the National Guard for all young black males who are suspected of gang activity – and now you’re defending it by saying “they’re all murders”?

          2 – Really? All murders? All of them convicted of murder in a trial by Jury of their peers? That’s a lot of murder… our national homicide rate must be in the hundreds of thousands..

          Oh wait, never mind. You’re just an idiot trying to defend his bigotry and fear, as though it has factual support.

          3 – You ARE a racist, or at least just very bigoted. Your defenition of a “thug” who should be “shot on sight” includes most of the population of every major city. And you’ve now admited you’re OK with that.

          You ARE a racist bigot. You logic is non-existent. Your prejudice drives every aspect of your position – not the facts, not rational thought, just fear and hatred.

        • Does the term RICO mean anything? You can convict all members of an organization based on the general actions of the organization. Membership in that organization then becomes sufficient.

          Again, I don’t care what color they are. Shooting a ganbanger should, at worst, get you a ticket for littering.

          You’re the only one bringing race into this conversation. Typical SJW loser. No argument? Shout “yous racis” at the top of your lungs.

        • Ebby123, you are the only one I see is focused on race, first, last, and always. That means *YOU* are a racist.

        • So I’ve sort of been mulling serge’s suggestion here and I see that he beat me to posting about RICO.

          My attitude towards this is as follows:

          If you really want to crack down on this problem you have to be willing to incarcerate the small percentage of folks who are doing most of this shooting and lock them up for a long, long time or kill them if they resist. Ultimately, whether we want to admit it or not this is the solution to the current crop of fuckheads in Chicago. Clutch your pearls if you must.

          I would say you can do this with two approaches.

          The first takes longer but it’s simply a RICO case followed by proactive and aggressive policing to root out all the individuals tied to that organization and slap them with 25 to life. This sort of thing worked well against Top 6 in Florida ( http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/reputed-top-6-gang-leader-sentenced-to-65-years-in/nLwy4/ ) I would suggest this approach, however it would seem that the folks that run Chicago don’t like this idea.

          If, on the other hand you want to get this done quickly I could see using the National Guard to effectively lock down the sections of the city and then using the State Police to sweep the area and find these people. Arrest when possible, kill if necessary ROE in effect. This of course runs into some rather serious Constitutional questions about search warrants (going door to door for example), freedom of movement and a “papers please” environment. Clearly such a concept could be abused and would set a terrible precedent but I’m not sure it wouldn’t be welcomed by most of the people in the area regardless of the color of their skin. I’ve lived in terrible neighborhoods and most people, quite frankly, don’t care how the shit stops they just want it to stop.

          Personally, I don’t see anything racist in this as I would assume that it would target members of gangs regardless of their skin color. I would expect skinhead gangs would get the same treatment as black or hispanic gangs.

        • @strych9

          Technically, search warrants are only necessary if you plan to use evidence discovered during the search. If your objective is just to apprehend the perps in question, you don’t need warrants for every shack you search.

          I see something very similar to how we tracked down the members of Saddam’s crew back on 2003-2004. You go house to house with a list of subjects clearing areas as you go. It would basically be a controlled grid search which should last all of a few days, at most. We already do this every time a violent felon escapes from federal prison, this would just be the same thing on a more localized level with a bit more firepower to back them up.

          As I said elsewhere, the local PD already has lists of all these groups and their known associates. All of them have felony priors so due process is not much of an issue. You round them up, thrown them in a holding camp, then charge the lot of them under RICO. Oh, and if they resist… Yeah, shoot to kill. They can either spend the rest of their lives in hard labor or they can serve the community as lawn fertilizer. It’s up to them which one it will be.

          Just as in Iraq, I guarantee you that the local population will be more than happy to hand over these clowns once they realize that the guys doing the searching mean business.

        • serge,

          I would disagree with you based on the plain text of the 4A which says, in part “…supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

          However, you raise a valid point. We already do this sort of thing when people escape a prison, or after the Boston Marathon attack or after that guy shot the state police officer and disappeared into the woods. Some people complain about it, but for the most part no one really cares because some dangerous person is on the loose.

          As I said, I suspect that most of the community would happy this was happening and even happy to help as long as they knew it wasn’t going to be a revolving door policy and that all of this guy’s buddies were going with him. I think the whole thing would raise hell in the civil liberties community though. I can already hear the wails of “This isn’t Falujah or Tikrit!!!

          As I also said, I think it sets a bad precedent but on the other hand you have a fairly strong argument that such a precedent already exists.

          It’s just sad that the idiots that have run, and still do run, Chicago have let things get to the point that such a suggestion even merits discussion.

        • @strych9

          The issue is what legal recourse would they have? Once the search is complete and no evidence seized, I somehow doubt any court would let a felon out just because he was squatting in a shack we didn’t have a warrant for. Simple solution is to issue warrants for all known members of a given crew in connection to the RICO investigation with the place being designated as the area of operations for the search.

        • Worked in the Philippines…the drug dealers turned themselves in after shoot on sight was declared by Duterte………………aka THE PUNISHER

        • “inter arma enim silent leges”

          This is a phrase I would be careful about throwing around based on the actual history of the Roman Republic and Empire. A case could be made that such a thought process greatly hastened the fall of the Republic.

          Not every dictator is a Cincinnatus.

          Personally, I’d rephrase a famous quote and go with “Gangs delenda est” and leave it at that.

          As for your previous, based on how police operate today, a warrant for the person’s arrest combined with suspicion that they might be on a certain premises has worked in the past with no need for a specific warrant for that premises. Personally, I think that goes a bit beyond the language of the 4A but I won’t argue that such blanket warrants have not been issued before. I imagine someone would have to declare a “state of emergency” or something similar but I agree that what you’re speaking of could be done and would pass muster with many of the courts in this land. I don’t have to agree, but my opinion doesn’t mean shit because I’m not a judge.

          Ah well, at least someone else knows some Latin. Felix dies on that count.

        • It could be argued that the fall of Rome was the result of the Empire pandering to mouth breathing plebs rather than doing what was necessary to keep the rabble in line.

        • I’d rephrase that to “Citizens failing to due their civic duty in checking the power of politicians within the Republic”.

          But hey, semantics. Your version is pithier.

          We’ve gotten fat and sassy. While that is what we all aspire to I suspect you know that you cannot enjoy what you’ve expired to for too long without resting on your laurels too long and losing something because of it. Freedom must be guarded jealously or, one way or another, it’s lost. We’ve fail to guard jealously and that’s why Chicago is the way it is. We’ve stopped asking Cui bono? as long as part of that answer is “me”.

          I get a lot of questions about the one tattoo that people generally can see, basically because no one knows what it means but I got it for a very good reason. It says “Auribus Teneo Lupum” I’ve found that to be something we should ALL remember in most of what we do.

        • I’m talking about Rome around 400BC which was much more “Starship Troopers” than most people realize. That worked and it worked shocking well.

          The constant wars, many of which Rome lost, maybe not such a workable ideal but they were able to pull it off for centuries after the fall of the Republic. Not everything about Rome is covered by Gibbon.

  6. Defense lawyers are a curious bunch. Case in point: This one wants us to feel ashamed that we are “demonizing” murderers.

    Get a clue, lady. If you murder someone, you are a demon. You deserve to be left in a cage for the rest of your life.

  7. What the Cook County PD is saying, it cost too much to incarcerate gang members who used guns to protect their lives from other gang members. She wants the coin spent on prison funneled to black single moms for abortions, midnight B ball, and father replacement programs democrats promoted forty last 40 years.

  8. So, if they’re shooting up the place we should just give them a wag of the finger and send them on their way? We’re not talking about a shoplifter or an underage drinker here we’re talking about legit card carrying people who can and will kill you if you are an inconvenience to them getting what they want that can get the weapons to do it no matter how many feel good laws get passed to try and keep them from doing such. Lets take another column from Anita Alvarez the soon to be unemployed states attorney in the Chicagoland Area:

    “Under our current statutes, a felon who is convicted of carrying a firearm in public serves less than half of the sentence imposed by a judge or jury — about 15 months. When a violent street gang member is arrested on the streets of Chicago with a loaded gun, he or she typically serves just 12 months, also a fraction of the sentence imposed. To be very frank, these criminals know and understand our system. Gang members themselves tell our prosecutors that Illinois gun laws are “a joke.”

    Studies show that 63 percent of these gun offenders will reoffend within 12 months of release, and they are four times as likely to commit a homicide.”

    This means that for every 3 people caught as a felon with a gun, nearly 2 of them will be caught hot again within a year. If they are reformed, then why are they breaking laws again? I move that they didn’t get enough time out of society in order to reflect about what they’ve done.

    That said people like Anita are part of the problem too as proven with why she’s going to be unemployed (the Laquan Mcdonald shooting.) When the chief people in running a city and providing it justice (Rahm) are corrupt, that sets a hell of an example for the rest of the city to follow. And they’re doing an excellent job of it too.

  9. What Chicago needs is more guns, semi-legally attached to aggressive dudes like Illini-Zim. These Charles Bronson-like gents will clean up the mean streets of Chicago, all with a wink and a nod from LEO’s such as Cali-Cop-Zim, just like the Charles Bronson movies. Other than armed vigilantes, what else can possibly be done with the mindset of people like this candy-azz Public Defender?

  10. While I’m not against intervention (that’s not a scam) really going after these people with LE and prison most certainly is effective.

    Top Six was an effective gang north of Miami which was hiding behind a record label. They had all the other gangs in the area scared of them or working for them. Today, after a crackdown, no one reps Top Six.

    Deterrent programs, other opportunities AND policing/sentencing all have to be in the toolbox. Even if you cut off all lines of recruiting tomorrow, bangers still gonna bang.

    Really, I think the best idea to neutralize gangs might just be to federalize them. “Yo, I would bust a cap but I have to ask my boss and check 27 computer systems. Approval will probably take 18 months homie! I wish a motherfucker would…. do all this damn paperwork for me! Fuck it, lets take a five hour lunch, get drunk and spend the afternoon browing porn.”.

    • You laugh, but I think you’re closer to the truth than you realize.

      Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve experienced a continuous decline in the fraction of our population that needs to work in order to produce the goods and services used by our civilization. One reaction to this has been to create and consume more and better things, and that certainly has helped to keep more people employed. However, historically, it has not been enough. The fraction of the populace engaged in the workforce keeps dropping, and we’ve had to find some way of diverting the production of the workers to the growing number of non-productive people in a way that is perceived as justified and moral. Child labor laws and a standard retirement age were no-brainers, everyone agrees it’s moral to work to support one’s own children, and care of the elderly follows along a similar argument. We’ve also added disabled people to that list, among others.

      Since then, we’ve run out of low-hanging fruit and things have gotten a little weird. Often we do things to remove people from the workforce without realizing that’s what we’re doing. Does every janitor really need a Master’s Degree? Of course not, but we need to delay the next generation’s entry into the workforce, because the jobs are not there. Our output in terms of scientific and other academic papers has grown exponentially, but even in the biomedical field a majority of results are irreproducible. I hate to think what that implies for the softer sciences and humanities. Our civilization would probably get by without another neopagan feminist critique of Beethoven.

      Likewise, how many people do we have sitting around in Washington, agonizing in committee about tweaking font size requirements for widget serialization? This is that federalized gang you speak of, them and their counterparts in private industry whose entire purpose is to deal with them. This is where the wealthy and middle classes have been hiding their supernumerary members.

      The poor and the working classes don’t have that luxury. The poor we’ll cycle between prison and the illicit economy, the legal economy having no place for them. The working class? Well, someone has to guard the extra prisoners.

      • Well, obviously I meant it as a joke. I’m just thinking that if we could find a way to introduce a level of bureaucratic friction to how gangs operate, similar to say… the VA system, we could slow down their killings rather dramatically.

        As for the rest of what you say. You have a point, but I would counter with something else.

        The reason less and less people work is because we, as a country, have become far too much like the VA. Many businesses are never started, or they fail early before they can employ a large number of people, due to the costs of compliance with .gov regs. This has the “unseen” cost of businesses that don’t exist and the seen cost of joblessness.

        I’ll give you an example. I did a stint as a welder. At the time I was looking at all the trailers people drag stuff around on or in. I said to myself “Self, that thing is not expensive to make. It’s tube steel, welds, paint and basic wiring. Do you know anyone who could do that? Yes, self I do. Me.”

        So I looked into starting my own little side business in my garage welding up trailers just like the ones you see every day. I looked at the prices that these companies charge and realized I could make a huge profit and still undercut their price by 50% or more for the exact same product. Sounds great right? A better mousetrap and all that! Well, there’s a pretty significant cost to doing this.

        First you can’t do it in your garage or backyard and be legal (damn you state!). Secondly once you’re a company doing this as an LLC you the regulatory requirements for welding this stuff up are INSANE. You need an MSDS for every item you might or might not use. Got a gallon of gas in your shed while you’re welding in the garage? Well, it’s on “the property” that the business is listed as being at. Better have your MSDS for that printed out and easily obtainable for all employees (me). Ditto pretty much everything else around you. Even if an item isn’t associated with your business if you get audited you better have a disposal plan for that item and saying “Running it through my lawnmower” for that gallon of gas doesn’t count. Then there’s the OSHA regs you have to comply with that will just make you want to kill yourself.

        In the end, what might have been a tidy little business with some employees wasn’t worth it to start up and take the risk that if I missed something and got audited I’d bent over by the government and possibly jailed for a long time.

        Keep in mind that this is the same government that brought federal charges against a janitor on the East coast for pouring the cleaning solution he used every day down the wrong drain even though he had no way of knowing that drain went to a stream because it was mislabeled. The judge had pity on the man and gave him no time or fines but he’s still been convicted of a federal crime under the Clean Water Act and his life is in ruins.

  11. Hmm, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing but to keep expecting a different outcome?

    Chicago has been doing exactly the same thing for many years, a revolving door justice system whereby offenders plea bargain serious felonies down to misdemeanors and then are released to re-offend. This sounds exactly like the definition of insanity!

    Break this cycle and lock up criminals please!

  12. Laws against violent activity don’t come with clauses. They are pretty clear about the penalty. If we need billboards or TV ads explaining this in multiple languages or imagery so be it.

  13. Ronnie said that the best social program is a job. I tend to think he’s right, but of course that would require an economy that is actually producing real growth, something we haven’t seen for almost a decade now.

    • An abundance of well-paying jobs inflicts serious damage on the power of government to control enough people to allow expansion of their power, thus the situation (an abundance of jobs) must be avoided while maintaining plausible deniability. Witness the past 8 years, exactly everything done has been destructive of job growth. But Fed power has sure grown! Now, if the peons are just fooled or stupid enough to believe the lies one more time, we can really make some progress.

  14. What I’ve noticed, at least down here in Miami, is that the first charge to get thrown out when they catch a violent offender who used a firearm, is the firearm charge. We used to have 10-20-DONE (or something like that in Florida) where if you pulled a gun in a crime, you got 10 years. If you shot someone (and they lived) you got 20. If you shot someone and died, you got life, and potentially the chair.

    I don’t buy the “background” thing one bit. Regardless of your upbringing, you know that killing someone in an offensive manner is wrong. And if you don’t, you should probably be locked up anyways.

    Harsh sentencing for violent offenses will knock down the crime rate in Chicago enormously.

  15. “[L]ocking up everyone without consideration of his or her background . . . is fundamentally unfair.”

    Exactly. If a murdering thug was toilet trained too soon or too late, cut him loose because it’s not his fault. He was scarred for life!

    This is the legacy of a generation of twits raised by Dr. Spock.

  16. The War on Guns is the inevitable consequence of the The War on Drugs. Eliminate this profit center caused by prohibition and you’ll eliminate most of the gang activity and violence. You would think we would have learned that 80 years ago.

    • At this point, it may be too late. Deprived of income from drug sales, dealers will move on to other forms of crime. They don’t have the education or social skills to prosper in noncriminal society. Repealing Prohibition took the profit out of booze but it didn’t starve organized crime to death.

      • I don’t think there is any possibility of another prohibited product generating the kind of money drugs do, I believe if we eliminate drugs as a criminal funding source, the crime industry will suffer extensive damage, which is to be hoped.

  17. “Ms. Campanellis’ solution?”

    Lots more funding thrown at her job description and her buddies, just take it from the actual producers and hand it to me! THAT is her “solution”.

  18. The only way to kill gangs is to kill the culture that they spring from; the only way to kill that is to make it unappealing. I don’t have a ready answer for how to do that, but it probably involves fighting ignorance (somehow improving education and the appeal of education), rewarding excellence (making joining greater society, holding down a job, and generally “going straight” seem appealing), and NOT rewarding the status quo (this one is easy; public assistance, as it is currently structured, encourages people to remain on it forever). If a life of poverty supplemented by criminal gains is both easier to access AND more profitable (including getting caught as a business expense), then you will never be able to break up gangs.

  19. Her “recommended solutions” are all government based. Nowhere does she address the issue of broken families. Most of these inner city gang youth are from single parent “homes”, and I use that term loosely. The entire culture needs to be changed so there are responsible two parent families raising children. Responsible parents will replace the gangs, not some government outreach program.

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