(Editor's note: This article was published first at Wirepoints).
We’ve reached a breaking point on crime in Illinois and supermajority Democrats in the state legislature know it. So as June’s primary elections approach, they’ve introduced legislation to create a Crime Reduction Task Force that would “develop and propose ways to reduce crime across the state.” Legislators, law enforcement, policy experts, victims and witnesses would “review research and best practices while taking expert and witness testimony” and then issue findings and recommendations to lawmakers and the Governor by March 1 of next year.
But they will be studying the symptom, not the disease.
The disease is absent fathers which makes young men prone to gangs and crime. And the disease is anti-police sentiment in Illinois, aided and abetted by lawmakers, which sends cops heading for the exits.
How do you know if your city doesn’t have enough cops?
It’s an evolving science. But clues tend to look like this: In Champaign, police staffing is so low the city is advertising for private security firms to help out in downtown trouble spots. In Chicago as of Monday murders to date this year compared to 2019 are up 47 percent, shooting incidents 46 percent and motor vehicle thefts 56 percent.
In Chicago cops are down by 1,000 officers even after 614 empty slots were deep-sixed. Detective manpower is sub-par compared to other major cities. And solving murders isn’t going well at all.
Out of 799 Chicago murders counted in 2021, charges were filed in only 219 cases. Another 68 offenders were dead. Okay, count those cases as solved, too. That adds up to a real “murder clearance rate” of 36 percent. Exceedingly poor. So what happens? Police supervisors answering to Mayor Lori Lightfoot fudged the numbers upward, as the FBI allows. They counted another 135 cases that prosecutors wouldn’t prosecute based on the evidence, as “cleared” or solved. And crowed about a murder clearance rate greater of 50 percent.
There’s other bleeding that won’t stop. In Illinois police resignations were up 65 percent in 2021 versus the prior year, compared to 45 percent nationwide. Staffing in local police departments across the state is from 10 to 25 percent below authorized personnel levels. Recruitment of new officers is at a 30-year-low. All this according to the Illinois Police Chiefs Association, in a recent red-lettered bold-font message.
They’re leaving because of a hostile environment for police. Illinois Democratic lawmakers in 2021 approved a dead-of-night “criminal justice reform” bill in the waning hours of a lame duck session. It was almost 800 pages long. They had to pass it to find out what was in it. Among the provisions: cops may lose their protection against personally paying settlements in lawsuits filed by criminal suspects alleging mistreatment. Cops now can also lose their state certification to work, based on anonymous complaints. And sworn affidavits are no longer required for citizens to file disciplinary complaints against police.
So the legislative task force will make recommendations. You won’t see one for rescinding the state law that blocked county prosecutors from charging juvenile carjackers as adults. You won’t see a mandate that in all counties thefts valued at greater than $300 shall be charged as felonies. And you won’t see any honest acknowledgement of this report from the front: a young man arrested for three robberies on public transit in Chicago, two of them using a weapon, told police, “I have no way in life.” As in, no pathway.
Chicago Alderman Ray Lopez has put a fine point on how that kind of thing happens. It’s not for lack of after-school programs or “trauma-informed” therapy for “under-served populations.” He said, “Generational gang life isn’t just something that’s encouraged. It’s almost revered in some neighborhoods. If you really want to get to what is at the heart of a lot of this, it is gangs, and it is the borderline collapse of the family unit in many of our neighborhoods…”
“The borderline collapse of the family unit?” Yes, actually.
Chicago’s own health department has reported that in every year between 1999 and 2009 more than 80 percent of births to black women in Chicago were to single mothers. The full breakdowns by race and neighborhood are here, on pages 25 and 27.
For Latinos, the figure rose from 45 to 56 percent over those 11 years while Asians hovered at 10 to 11 percent and whites dropped from 17.5 percent to 13.8.
And the kicker: where births to single mothers were greatest in Chicago, murder was and remains among the highest. In communities such as West and East Garfield Park, North Lawndale, Englewood, South Shore, Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale.
There’s the real job for your task force, lawmakers. How to restore the two-parent families in communities of color.
Assuming we’re interested in the real root causes of crime.
Make sure to invite some men and women of faith to the table.