'It won't stop the murders': why Chicago's activists oppose Trump's 'gun strike force' | Cities
After more than 18 months of threatening to send “the feds†to Chicago, Donald Trump finally announced that he was dispatching a “gun strike force†to the city in June.
The move, intended to halt the spiraling murder rate in the city â€" there were 762 homicides in Chicago in 2016 alone â€" was announced with much fanfare.
But away from the rarefied confines of the White House, the grassroots activists who spend their days working to stop violence have expressed deep scepticism over the 20 federal agents Trump is deploying to their city â€" saying the move will “definitely not†reduce the number of murders.
Those organizations, who operate in Chicago’s most troubled neighborhoods miles from the gleaming skyscrapers of the downtown Loop and try to counsel young people against gun and other crimes, told the Guardian that the money would be better spent on community programs aimed at deterring people from violence in the first place.
“It’s going to incarcerate more people, but it’s definitely not going to bring the numbers of murders down,†said Pastor Corey Brooks, who runs Project HOOD, a non-profit organization in Chicago’s south side that offers training for young people looking for a way out of gang life.
“I don’t see it making a major dent in murders being committed. Being solved, yes. Being committed, no.â€
The Guardian spent four days following community organizers, including Brooks, in the course of making a film on grassroots activism in the city â€" where the murder rate had been falling steadily until a dramatic spike over the past two years.
In 2016 762 people were killed in Chicago â€" up from 407 in 2014. It is not the only major city in the US that has serious problems with violence, but Trump singled Chicago out during his campaign, describing the city as “totally out of control†and plagued by violence.
But the message time and again from people with first-hand knowledge of the problems in some of Chicago’s neighborhoods was that Trump’s solution of “sending in the feds†was not helpful. Federal funding was welcome â€" but only if it was spent on community programs that could offer jobs, training and counseling to those impacted by crime.
“Hurt people are the ones who are out there hurting people,†said Susan Thompson, who runs Chicago Survivors, a group that meets with families in the aftermath of a fatal shooting to offer practical guidance on the process of identifying, burying and grieving their loved ones.
“And not to realise the relationship between public health issues and violence is a major error on the part of the federal government.â€
In the South Shore neighborhood in the south side of Chicago, Ulysses “US†Floyd of Ceasefire â€" an organization that aims to stop violence by using “disease control†methods, ie stopping violence at the source â€" took us to one of the streets most afflicted by violence.
“Our motto is to detect, interrupt and then change the norms,†said Floyd, a former gang leader in the city. “Try to get them to see that shooting is not acceptable. It’s not the norm in our society.†Many of his colleagues were also formerly involved in crime and now use that influence to speak to current gang members to try to figure out which groups are currently at odds, then try to soothe relations.
“The communities they come up in, they can’t get no jobs, there’s nothing to do, so they’re just violent,†Floyd said.
On the day the Guardian met Floyd, there had been a shooting moments before we arrived. A 17-year-old girl, Kyra Young, had been killed and two men injured in a drive-by shooting.
“This affects the whole community, not just Ceasefire,†said Floyd.
“How you get used to it?†asked Chico Tillmon, an outreach worker for the group. “Because you never know when it could be you or your family.â€
Tillmon said he wanted to cut the interview short because “now we’ve got a lot of serious work to do, to try to get to the bottom of it, because things happen so fast, the people involved know who did it, and within minutes there could be another shootingâ€.
Until 2015 Ceasefire operated in 14 different neighborhoods in Chicago. But then its funding was cut by the state of Illinois â€" which has failed to pass a budget for over two years â€" and now it has just one office in South Shore.
Charlie Ransford is director of science and policy at Cure Violence, which oversees Ceasefire and pioneered its health-based approach. Like others we spoke to, he was hopeful the new gun task force would bring down killings, but agreed it was unlikely to have an impact alone.
“The key is there’s got to be all the pieces in place. And if you don’t have all the pieces in place, you’re going to have a problem that gets worse,†Ransford said.
The spike in homicides began at almost exactly the same time Ceasefire had to close most of its offices, Ransford said. He did not believe that was the only reason for the dramatic increase, but he said “a correlation of data†definitely suggested a link.
“At the exact moment we went from 14 program sites down to one, that was the exact point in time when a downward trend in shootings and killings reversed and started going up,†Ransford said.
“There’s actually one police district that had a continuing decrease â€" and that was the one where we kept working. All the other areas had increases.
“And in fact the places that had the greatest increases â€" some of which doubled in shootings and killings â€" those were the places that we used to work that we then pulled out of because of the lapse of funding.â€
For now, groups like Project HOOD, Chicago Survivors and Ceasefire can only continue to do their best with limited resources. In the meantime, they’ll be hoping, without much optimism, that Trump’s gun task force can have an impact.
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