Homicide Rates Among Teens Remain Static As Overall Numbers Decline
By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 23, 2014 6:00PM
Chicago’s homicide numbers have fallen slightly since a bloody 2012 count made national headlines. Through Wednesday 91 homicides have been reported by the Police Department, although our recent spats of warm weather have coincided with a rise in shootings across the city.
While those numbers are encouraging there is one age group for whom homicides are holding steady: children. The Chicago Reporter’s Angela Caputo decided to look at the numbers after five children were shot on the South Side last weekend and found some sobering statistics.
While overall murders are down this year, violence against children 18 and under is stubbornly high; when comparing the first four months of each year since 2008, the numbers have held relatively steady since in 2011.One in every five people murdered in Chicago is 18 or younger. And most of them grew up in neighborhoods where violence is the norm.
Violence isn’t the only norm in these neighborhoods. The New York Times used Census statistics to map poverty rates in major U.S. cities and found many neighborhoods on the South and West sides face unrelenting poverty levels ranging from 40 percent to over 60 percent in Englewood, Park Manor and Woodlawn.
Caputo, who regularly visits these neighborhoods for her stories, noted that 80 percent of school-aged children were killed in the black or Latino neighborhoods they call home. One Northwest side teacher told Caputo, "these kids are pushed from place to place. Snatched up and put in places that would intimidate an adult.”
Yet to hear Mayor Emanuel tell it, we just need to instill these children with better values.