The Chainlink

I've been hearing rumors that North Avenue Beach was closed do to out of control thugs  and gangbangers groping and assaulting people, not due to heat, as has been widely reported.  Rumors of cyclists knocked from their bikes... I know a few cyclists were picked up and dropped in the lake by some thugs early last month. The sources are somewhat suspect, but I wanted to know if anyone had heard or experienced anything.  Generally my least favorite part of the trail, but I'm debating whether to avoid it completely this summer. As the CPD is undergoing regime change, we should be diligent about reporting incidents like this, even if front-line CPD staff are dismissive... so that resources get allotted appropriately.

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Excellent post.

Liz said:

I guess I'm glad I don't live in the "true" Chicago. But I think it's hardly surprising that people who don't live in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods of the south and west sides care more about their own neighborhoods. The reaction to these attacks is proportional to the centrality, density, and purpose of the location. Mess with the hive, you're gonna get stung. 

The acceptance when violence of this magnitude occurs on the far south side is really a reflection of the true chicago

Blaming the people in crime-ridden areas and allowing them to just "take their own responsibility" leads to the situation we have right now. Bored youths from those areas are coming downtown. They have nothing better to do, no prospects for a better life, and will not face serious consiquences for thier actions.

There are many societal changes that need to occur before this cycle of violence and crime can be broken.

Should we start with the prison system? Criminals are put in a cell and let out some time later with fewer prospects of work than when they went it. What incentive do they have to not commit crime? If the revolving door prison system is marginally improved, it could mean very large savings to the tax payers.

Should we start with the community schools in these areas? They are underfunded, and even the most well meaning teachers cannot begin to address the serious issues of children who witness violence, are abused, neglected or just happen to be children of children who are not equipped to handle parenting. Having a consisten adult who is nuturing, caring, and looking out for their well being is not something that can be "fixed" by putting more police on the streets.

Should we start with addiction and drugs? The people most in need of help have no money or means to recieve it. This costs our society much more than simply paying to address these issues directly.

How about mental health? Even the most well off indivuals struggling with mental health disorders can suffer for decades before recieving the correct treatment. What are those without the means to pay for expensive psychiatrists and medications to do. How does out society address those who don't even aknowledge that they are sick?

How do we start to build community pride? Say what you will about Father Michael Pfleger but he has managed to make a comminty proud of itself. Teaching residants that this is not the way it has to be, that they can make a difference and improve their community is something that people don't even know is possible. Hopelessness is a terrible and destructive condition.

This is a very large problem, that does not have a simple solution.

 

Adding police to high profile areas is putting a bandaid on the situation.

That was a nice post, Liz. I am not much of a social determinist but I find nothing mysterious about bored kids from Grand Crossing or Washington Park deciding to go up to one of the richest places in the world to piss all over it. Chicago had a massive influx of internal refugees and decided to warehouse most of them in neighborhoods isolated from the rest of the city and poorly served by basic social services. That has consequences that have never really been faced up to, and while most of the city is almost unbelievably safe by historical standards, the parts that aren't are really horrible places to grow up. It just doesn't shock me that a kid from such a place would want to go rob rich people.
I'm not worried about being a wilding victim at all, because the city is going to flood affected areas with cops, but in the long run the problem is about reconnecting parts of the city that have been very effectively walled off from the functional part. No one in power actually seems to want to do that, so we'll just get more quarantining leading to broken communities becoming that much more broken and their problems spilling out into rich people land ad infinitum.

Liz and Dr. Doom both said it well.  Unless the city and our society are prepared to do more to help solve the problems caused by decades of warehousing many of the poorest people in isolated areas, having the police intervene is ultimately just a band-aid. 

 

Residents of the projects and poor neighborhoods need better education, support to kids and their families so that those kids actually value their education enough to want to learn (and have resources if their parents don't have the skills to help them with homework), better transportation, and more jobs that pay a living wage that are appropriate for someone without a college education.  Not everyone will go to college.  People need to be able to support themselves.  This is a big complex problem with many causes and no easy answers.

Dr. Doom said:

That was a nice post, Liz. I am not much of a social determinist but I find nothing mysterious about bored kids from Grand Crossing or Washington Park deciding to go up to one of the richest places in the world to piss all over it. Chicago had a massive influx of internal refugees and decided to warehouse most of them in neighborhoods isolated from the rest of the city and poorly served by basic social services. That has consequences that have never really been faced up to, and while most of the city is almost unbelievably safe by historical standards, the parts that aren't are really horrible places to grow up. It just doesn't shock me that a kid from such a place would want to go rob rich people.
I'm not worried about being a wilding victim at all, because the city is going to flood affected areas with cops, but in the long run the problem is about reconnecting parts of the city that have been very effectively walled off from the functional part. No one in power actually seems to want to do that, so we'll just get more quarantining leading to broken communities becoming that much more broken and their problems spilling out into rich people land ad infinitum.

Ask that oncologist in his sixties who was robbed and assaulted and I'm almost positive that he will tell you that he felt a lot less violated when he learned what neighborhoods these kids are supposedly from. He might even agree that we should not expect a 16 or 18 yr old to know that it is wrong and illegal to beat and rob other people, no matter how rich they are or how nice an area they decide to have the gall to sit and mind their own business in.

 

I grew up and still live in, a lower income/working class neighborhood. Could my local public school have been better? Sure. Would it have been nice if there were more higher paying jobs around here? You bet. But do most teens that live near me know the difference between right and wrong? Of course. Don't get me wrong, there is no shortage of ne'er do-wells around here like everywhere else in Chicago. There are also tons of successful business owners, college grads, and law-abiding citizens here too.

 

Stereotypes go both ways. It is wrong to assume that young minority kids from poor neighborhoods are automatically prone to be criminals. It is equally wrong to assume that because they are minorities and from poor neighborhoods, they lack the ability to differentiate right from wrong and the ability to abstain from robbing people. It is kind of insulting to me as a former teen form a low income neighborhood to hear someone say "its the rotten system that makes you more likely to commit crimes, you really don't have a choice as to your own actions".

 

Sometimes people just rob people because they want an iPad, or because they saw a news story about a wilding and thought it would be cool to do it too...

@Vando

 

Since you're patting yourself in the back here, what are you implying?

 

You don't think that generations of racial segregation play a role here?

 

Do you think everybody has the same opportunities, like yourself?

 

 

I rode the stretch from Ohio to Hollywood tonight both ways between about 7 and 8 pm. Decent amount of visible police presence, in the form of motorized police vehicles driving (on the bike path) between Oak and North, mounted police, and cops just hanging out at North Ave beach house. But besides that, it just seemed like another hot summer night at the lakefront, with people playing volleyball, softball, jogging, and enjoying the evening. The scariest thing was the bikers with only rudimentary knowledge of hand signals. Please don't let fear dissuade you from going to the lake. We need all the law-abiding people out there we can get.


Melanie said:
Hopefully the police presence will continue and it will be safe to travel the LFP once again- thank you for the updates!

Amen, Vando.  Well said.  Poor doesn't have to equal criminal, and furthermore, that should not be an automatic assumption, nor should it be an excuse.



Vando said:

Ask that oncologist in his sixties who was robbed and assaulted and I'm almost positive that he will tell you that he felt a lot less violated when he learned what neighborhoods these kids are supposedly from. He might even agree that we should not expect a 16 or 18 yr old to know that it is wrong and illegal to beat and rob other people, no matter how rich they are or how nice an area they decide to have the gall to sit and mind their own business in.

 

I grew up and still live in, a lower income/working class neighborhood. Could my local public school have been better? Sure. Would it have been nice if there were more higher paying jobs around here? You bet. But do most teens that live near me know the difference between right and wrong? Of course. Don't get me wrong, there is no shortage of ne'er do-wells around here like everywhere else in Chicago. There are also tons of successful business owners, college grads, and law-abiding citizens here too.

 

Stereotypes go both ways. It is wrong to assume that young minority kids from poor neighborhoods are automatically prone to be criminals. It is equally wrong to assume that because they are minorities and from poor neighborhoods, they lack the ability to differentiate right from wrong and the ability to abstain from robbing people. It is kind of insulting to me as a former teen form a low income neighborhood to hear someone say "its the rotten system that makes you more likely to commit crimes, you really don't have a choice as to your own actions".

 

Sometimes people just rob people because they want an iPad, or because they saw a news story about a wilding and thought it would be cool to do it too...

Implying?  I think he was implying this:


"Stereotypes go both ways. It is wrong to assume that young minority kids from poor neighborhoods are automatically prone to be criminals. It is equally wrong to assume that because they are minorities and from poor neighborhoods, they lack the ability to differentiate right from wrong and the ability to abstain from robbing people. It is kind of insulting to me as a former teen form a low income neighborhood to hear someone say "its the rotten system that makes you more likely to commit crimes, you really don't have a choice as to your own actions".

 


MagMileMarauder said:

@Vando

 

Since you're patting yourself in the back here, what are you implying?

 

You don't think that generations of racial segregation play a role here?

 

Do you think everybody has the same opportunities, like yourself?

 

 

Well said.  I've met people who grew up in the projects who went on to college and became teachers, business owners, lawyers, etc.  The culture and values of one's family can make a big difference in one's values and actions as a teen and as an adult, just as education and opportunity can.  There are both good people and criminals at all levels of society.  Look at Bernie Madoff.

H3N3 said:

Implying?  I think he was implying this:


"Stereotypes go both ways. It is wrong to assume that young minority kids from poor neighborhoods are automatically prone to be criminals. It is equally wrong to assume that because they are minorities and from poor neighborhoods, they lack the ability to differentiate right from wrong and the ability to abstain from robbing people. It is kind of insulting to me as a former teen form a low income neighborhood to hear someone say "its the rotten system that makes you more likely to commit crimes, you really don't have a choice as to your own actions".

 


MagMileMarauder said:

@Vando

 

Since you're patting yourself in the back here, what are you implying?

 

You don't think that generations of racial segregation play a role here?

 

Do you think everybody has the same opportunities, like yourself?

 

 

I don't at all assume that growing up in a bad neighborhood deprives you of the ability to differentiate right from wrong, or dooms you to being a sort of subhuman savage. The vast majority of kids in neighborhoods like Grand Crossing and Washington Park don't go around beating random people down.

 

I do think that neighborhoods as bad as some of those in the worst parts of Chicago are going to produce a disproportionate number of kids with no real sense of right and wrong (or at least no impulse control), and that if you want to reduce the number of such kids you're going to have to address the problems with their communities in the broadest possible sense.

 

Writing off wilding as the product of The Man oppressing poor black communities is wrong, and insulting to the huge majority of families in bad neighborhoods who work hard to raise their kids to have common sense and morals. Pretending that there is no connection between institutionalized segregation and oppression and bored kids deciding to go fuck with rich people gets the dynamic just as wrong, though.

Pretending that there is no connection between institutionalized segregation and oppression and bored kids deciding to go fuck with rich people gets the dynamic just as wrong, though.

 

Agreed-- fortunately nobody commenting in this thread thus far has done so.

Unfortunately, none of the commenters in this thread are (as far as I know) policymakers.

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