Enforcement, Prevention and Alternatives have worked

Letter from Alderman Shiller

When I first ran for alderman, our community was in the grips of the highest crime rate in its history. At the time, I argued that crime could be reduced with a three-pronged attacked. I argued that we needed to focus on enforcement, prevention and alternatives.

This is exactly what we have done, and the results can be seen in the crime statistics. In truth, crime has gone down nationwide since the early 1990s. But the crime rate in the City of Chicago has fallen farther over the last decade than the rest of the county. And in the 46th Ward, crime has fallen much farther, much faster than anywhere else in the city. During the 1980s, the crime rate in the two police districts that serve our Ward was about average for the city as a whole. For the last four years, the crime rate in these two districts have been among the lowest in the city.

This is not to say that there is not still work to be done. One violent act is one violent act too many. And, our community still suffers from sporadic incidents of crime and violence. Our focus, and our strategy has worked, however. And it is for this reason, that I believe it will continue to work.

Enforcement

I have continually met with the 20th and 23rd District Commanders, as they have identified hot-spots, targeted those hot-spots and eliminated criminal activity in those hot-spots. This is not to say that I advocate broad-brush actions that often result from knee-jerk reactions to incidents of violence. In fact, I believe that broad-brush actions are often counter-productive and inefficient. I constantly stress to the District Commanders my belief that profiling is an ineffective form of crime enforcement. The most effective form is identifying specific individuals and targeting those specific individuals.

Alternatives

As soon as I became Alderman I began working with the Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety to promote community policing. We brought CAPS to the 46th Ward six months prior to the rest of the city. Unfortunately, in recent years CAPS participation has dwindled. If CAPS is going to continue to be a truly effective tool, all members of the community must participate.

Prevention

I have worked with various community organizations, local schools and local parks to increase the education and recreation opportunities for our area's young people. Currently, several of our area public schools now remain open to as late as 7 p.m. with after school programs. The Uplift Campus (formerly Arai), Gill Park, and Clarendon Park all now have additional afternoon and evening program that did not exist before.

My proudest collaboration is the collaboration I engaged in with a group of high-school and college students in the early 1990s. Those Uptown born and raised students created a series of education and recreation programs throughout the community. One of those programs--the Youth on Youth summer school program, began in 1992 at Truman College. Twelve college students from the area worked with 30 high school students from the area to hold summer school classes for 120 middle school students. The next year, Youth on Youth moved over to Arai Middle School. Last summer, Youth on Youth celebrated its 15th Anniversary--with a completely different group of college and high school students doing the teaching. Of those original 12 organizers of the first Youth on Youth, nine have gone on to become teachers, and six currently work at the Uplift Community School, either as teachers or administrators.

Finally, I believe that one of the most important steps we have taken towards prevention is by completely changing both the mind-set of the Chicago Police Department, and the process when the police deal with domestic violence. As I said nearly twenty years ago, when I first introduced the sweeping changes, "We will not be able to address the problem of violence on the street until we address the problem of violence in the home." As long as our society continued to silently condone violence in the home, we had to expect that those youth witnessing that violence would take it to the street. I truly believe that the strides our city took during the 1990s in overhauling the way we dealt with domestic violence has had an ancillary affect on youth and gang violence.

Again, everything is not perfect. But, we have come along way with this multi-pronged approach. We all deserve credit. And, I believe over the next few years we will continue to see the fruits of this approach.