Thursday, July 12, 2012

MORE HOMICIDES IN CHICAGO! BRING BACK HANGING NOW!


If you read my post on Illinois homicide has risen thanks to the abolition of the death penalty!, you will understand that the removal of capital punishment will see a change in homicide rates. Abolitionists claim that money can be saved by hiring more police, but now they are proven wrong! They say the death penalty does not deter any crime at all. I have a strong feeling that gangs are now choosing to commit murders in Chicago, Illinois as there is no death penalty there.
            Read the news below:

As homicides spike, Chicago mayor defends tactics

Posted: Jul 10, 2012 8:51 AM Updated: Jul 10, 2012 8:51 AM
By DON BABWIN
Associated Press 

CHICAGO (AP) - Chicago's mayor and police superintendent publicly defended their new gang-fighting strategy Monday amid growing criticism that the changes are failing and a big reason why the city's homicide rate has soared this year.

After weeks of media reports about Chicago homicides - which so far are up nearly 38 percent from last year - Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy defiantly said during a news conference that the gang strategies in place before McCarthy arrived were the ones that failed, not the new ones.

More beat officers are now on the streets and staying in specific areas, replacing the large, specialized units that would temporarily drop into crime-ridden areas. Emanuel and McCarthy said they have no plans to change that strategy, and the mayor announced Monday that he's devoting another $4 million to tear down vacant buildings where gang members live and store guns and drugs.

The old tactic of flooding high-crime areas with teams of hundreds of officers for a short period of time, then moving the teams to other areas, was "like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound," McCarthy said. "We're not repairing anything by doing that."

Emanuel, who has made attacking the city's street gangs a cornerstone of his administration, was equally dismissive of the effectiveness of those citywide units.

"I don't think coming in, swatting something down and letting it come back in two weeks is strengthening a community," he said. "What it does is build up cynicism."

However, the mayor and police leader rolled out their new anti-gang strategies at a time when the homicide rate was quickly increasing. Among the more recent high-profile deaths was a 7-year-old girl hit by a stray bullet while selling candy outside her home.

And on Monday, the Chicago Tribune ran a front-page story that included blistering criticism from two aldermen whose wards have been the center of much of the gang violence. One alderman said gang members no longer fear that they'll encounter the so-called strike units, which included dozens or even hundreds of officers who would temporarily saturate violent neighborhoods.

Chicago has averaged about 450 homicides a year since 2005, which is a dramatic drop from the roughly 900 homicides the city was experiencing annually in the early 1990s. Still, McCarthy said the current numbers are unacceptable - and noted that the city recorded about the same number of homicides last year as New York City, which is three times the size of Chicago.

"That's not success and I'm not willing to take it as success," said McCarthy, who spent much of his career as a New York City policeman.

He and Emanuel insisted that their crime-fighting strategies are paying off, noting that the city's overall crime rate has dropped 10 percent compared to the same time last year. McCarthy also said there is evidence that police are on the right track in their fight against street gangs.

"This weekend, there was half the number of shootings, half the number of murders as we had the same time last year," he said. He also noted that the amount of shootings over the weekend marked the fewest since February.

Quietly, though, some police officers have wondered about the wisdom of disbanding the large specialized units that were deployed by McCarthy's two immediate predecessors, Jody Weis and Phil Cline.

Weis said Monday that the units, which were sent to locations where a violent incident had occurred or in anticipation of where one might occur, were a big reason why the number of homicides fell when Cline was superintendent and during his last two years on the job.

"No one is proud of that, 450 homicides. But before these units were formed, there were 600," said Weis, a former FBI agent who was Chicago's police commissioner from 2008 until early 2011.

McCarthy, who replaced Weis when Emanuel became mayor, said that while Chicago's police force no longer has those citywide units, it finally has a citywide gang-fighting strategy that it never had before - one that pays special attention to the fact that much of the violence is tied to gangs retaliating against each other.

And Emanuel said there are other components of that citywide strategy, including targeting liquor stores and other businesses that police and community activists have identified as gang hangouts. Several have been closed.

Police also are doing gang audits, so they can identify where specific gangs operate and their members. And the plan the mayor announced Monday calls for the city to spend $4 million to tear down or board up vacant buildings that have been identified as places where gangs live, deal and store drugs, and hide guns.

Gangs, the mayor said, "will not find shelter in the city of Chicago."

Law Professor and former federal prosecutor, Bill Otis gave a testimony of a case he once prosecuted:
When I was an AUSA in Virginia, I was peripherally involved in a case against a drug gang that operated in both Alexandria and across the Potomac River in DC. 

As often happens, the gang was in competition with a rival gang. To deal with this problem, one of the fellows in Gang A was assigned to murder one of the fellows in Gang B, to establish that the price of this unwelcome competition was going to be real steep.

The designated shooter from Gang A (who was Alexandria based) managed to convince the target in Gang B (who was also Alexandria based) to take a drive with him. The plan was to take him to an unpleasant section of DC to kill him. Things unraveled, however, and the whole thing fizzled before any damage was done.

Since this involved both drugs and an interstate murder plot, the USAO was pretty interested. We caught the fellow from Gang A. One of the agents interviewing him asked why the plan was so complicated -- i.e., why take the risk and delay of driving into DC to kill the target when it would have been a good deal simpler just to ambush him in Alexandria?

Mr. Gang A answered: "Because DC ain't got no death penalty."

The idea that the DP has no deterrent value is not merely mistaken, but delusional.

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