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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