Nine-year-old Janari Ricks spent his final moments playing with his friends in a fenced-in area behind his mom’s row house in Cabrini Green, blissfully unaware of the evil that would soon befall him. His story is not unique. More than 430 people have been murdered so far this year in Chicago alone. Twenty-five children under the age of 10 have been shot as of this writing. Chicago is not the only city experiencing a surge of violence this year, either, but it has been the most drastic and the impact has been indiscriminate. A lack of trust in the police in conjunction with insufficient protection for witnesses that come forward means that the law is unable to effectively pursue perpetrators in many cases as well.
Darrel Johnson is 39. He has two young children with a third on the way. He walks with a limp as a result of a gunshot wound to his ankle many years ago. He parked his car a couple blocks from the back yard where Janari Ricks played and he limped up the alley, peering through the fence in search of a man with whom he has a standing feud. Janari laughed with his friends while neighbors watched over the children and Darrel Johnson pulled a .40 caliber handgun from his jeans. Darrel spotted his man, but the bullets found Janari Ricks instead.
Hours earlier, dozens of children marched and a man known as Dreadheadcowboy rode astride his horse in a parade for ‘Kids Lives Matter.’ Families and dance groups joined them to call for an end to the violence. They plead for the shootings to stop and hope for a day when no more children are caught in the crossfires of a feud they know nothing about. If a child never watches his friend die senselessly again, it will be too soon. The endless cycle of revenge has settled like a noose on the necks of many low-income communities across Chicago’s South and West sides, but no amount of street justice will bring anyone back.
Janari’s mother screams, begging the life not to leave her child’s body. The boy is rushed to nearby Lurie Children’s Hospital, but the bullets have already done their work. It’s too late. There is nothing left to save. Her life feels so much emptier without the bright smile she loved so dearly.
Janari’s friends will never be the same. They watched hot lead tear through his body, pouring hot red blood onto hot asphalt under a beautiful blue sky in their own back yards.No peace will come. They will no longer feel safe in their own homes. Fear will grip them tightly and make growing up that much harder. How could life ever be normal again? Who could focus on their math homework when the vivid details of their friend’s death are always in their mind’s eye?
Communities beset by violence are always under a cloud of fear. You don’t have to be directly involved in it to feel the heat of its flames. The mere fact of its existence is enough to drag everyone down. Very few people don’t think about taking advantage of new opportunities or learning new skills when they have to think about the possibility of a stray bullet finding them when they walk home from the grocery store.
Treja Kelley saw her cousin shot down last year and decided that she had to do something. She had to deal with that same fear; she knew the risk she was taking when she stepped forward. Nonetheless, step forward she did. She decided to bring her cousin’s killer to justice and she went on to testify in an act of unusual courage. A bounty was soon placed on her life. Months later, a pregnant Treja Kelley was walking down the street, talking to her boyfriend, when she was gunned down. Insufficient protective measures were taken by police to prevent something terrible from happening to her. She was 18. Aside from the tragedy of the loss of life, these kinds of events have a lasting impact on trust in the care the police and by extension the government have for brave souls such as Treja.
Trust is difficult to come by under any circumstances, but the police in Chicago have a sordid history of aggressive and unsavory tactics. Just a few decades ago, a scandal broke over police beating people until they confessed. Witnesses getting picked off by gangs after testifying undercuts any attempt to build on the scarce supply of trust. The problem is certainly complicated enough, but policing without the trust and cooperation of the community becomes a nearly impossible task. Adding even more dimensions to that complexity from a policy standpoint is the fact that police officers are people, too. They are not automatons that are capable of responding to a call about a kid getting shot and not being affected by it. This was one of the things that brought previous iterations of dedicated violent crime response units to an end. Officers in that unit came to see the people they were meant to protect as the enemy and flagrantly excessive uses of force came to the surface on multiple occasions. The unit was disbanded in disgrace. This only serves to exacerbate the problem as community members come to fear both gang violence and police violence. Is it any wonder that many struggle to function in school or at work under such stress?
To combat the issue, we need to build the trust. It means more than throwing money or police at the issue. It means we need a targeted plan to build trust and rehabilitate communities. When witnesses such as Treja Kelley come forward, we need to make sure we do everything we can to keep them safe. When entire communities participate in their own safety, people are not going to be committing brazen acts of violence in the middle of the day. When people are greeted with compassion instead of punitive action for nonviolent offenses, the downtrodden will be more willing to come forward. When investments are made in poor communities, good jobs will be more attractive than joining a gang. A virtuous cycle is possible, but it starts with involving the community in the promotion of their own safety and showing them that the goal is their well-being, not punishment. With trust established, the truly violent criminals will be much easier to locate because we will have the help of the people that live there.
There are still rays of hope. The witnesses of Janari’s murder came forward and an arrest was quickly made. The man who committed that heinous crime sits behind bars today. The key was the help of the neighbors.
The result of all this violence is more than the tragedy of the individuals harm. People need more than just freedom to pursue happiness for innovation to spring forth. They need to feel secure while doing so. Economist Lisa Cook showed the impact of violent racial incidents in the early 1900s on patent applications from blacks. That will hold no less true for the impact of violence perpetrated within these poor communities. People have a much harder time working effectively when they are preoccupied with their own or their children’s safety. Children struggle to open their minds to learn when weighed down heavily by stress, fear, or anger. The cost is in both lives and the future of disadvantaged communities.