CHICAGO — Late at night this month, the pastor’s phone beeped with a text message from an anguished parishioner. Andre Taylor, the church member’s great-nephew, had been shot and killed.

“Dre had just turned 16,” the message to the pastor, the Rev. Ira Acree, read. “I think that it’s time to call for action and solicit help, have the National Guard to take over and patrol the Chicago streets.”

Four days earlier, he had received another text. A different parishioner’s granddaughter, Daysha Wright, a 21-year-old nursing student, had been shot to death in a car, leaving a 2-year-old son.

At his desk at Greater St. John Bible Church, Mr. Acree said he was bracing for the coming months. “Unless something radical takes place, it’s going to be a blood bath this summer,” he said.

Chicago has long been troubled by violence, but homicides and shootings have risen sharply this year. Violent crime remains below the levels of two decades ago, and criminologists caution against finding trends in only a few months of data. But City Hall, the police and community leaders are alarmed by the surge: As of Friday, 131 people had been killed here in the first months of 2016, an 84 percent rise in homicides from the same period in 2015. There had been 605 shootings, nearly twice as many as at this point last year.

The increase could hardly have come at a more difficult time. The city is at a pivotal moment for law enforcement, mired in a crisis over police conduct and discipline and over distrust of officers, particularly among African-American residents, who make up about one-third of Chicago’s population.

The Justice Department is scrutinizing the patterns and practices of the city’s police force; the mayor on Monday named an interim police superintendent to replace the department’s fired leader; and voters have rejected Cook County’s top prosecutor, defeating her in a primary on March 15. The release in November of a police video that showed a white officer shooting a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, 16 times caused longstanding anger about police conduct to boil over.

And Mayor Rahm Emanuel faces enormous challenges: tamping down a flood of crime while simultaneously repairing frayed relations with the people who live here, as well as addressing low morale among officers.

“Trying to rebuild and do all of that at the same time, when violence is going up, creates all kinds of additional struggles and issues,” said Kim Foxx, who defeated a two-term incumbent in the Democratic primary to be the next Cook County state’s attorney in a race that revolved around the McDonald case.

Weekends and summer nights have often presented the most danger here, but these days shootings feel constant. On March 14, three police officers were shot and wounded in an exchange of gunfire that left a suspect dead. The next day, three people were killed in a single hour. The next, people inside two cars were reported shooting at one another along Lake Shore Drive.

“I’m really tired of it, and tired of worrying,” said Gloria Johnson, 37, who serves food at a restaurant in Austin, a neighborhood where the authorities say violence has been particularly harsh. Like other parts of the West Side, Austin has long wrestled with economic distress, gangs and crime, and Ms. Johnson bears a long scar on her elbow from a bullet fired about a decade ago. “But it seems like this year is just the worst of the worst,” she said.

The police say much of the violence in this city of about 2.7 million people is tied to gangs, which have become disorganized and have splintered into more factions. While shootings along Lake Shore Drive and near a W Hotel not far from Chicago’s Gold Coast have drawn notice, most of those dying are young men on the South and West Sides, the police say.

Back-and-forth acts of violence between groups, often using guns, are common. And the authorities say threats are increasingly delivered through social media (a notion some officers here have begun referring to as “cyberbanging”), perhaps speeding up the pace of retaliation.

A long-running dispute between gang factions, the authorities say, was at play in November, when Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old fourth grader, was lured from a South Side park where he was playing basketball into an alley where he was fatally shot, execution-style. This month, in what the authorities believe was a continuation of the fight, three more people were shot and wounded, and Tyshawn’s father, Pierre Stokes, was charged.

Few agree on why bloodshed has surged so far this year. Some experts point to relatively mild winter weather, while others note that Chicago has had ups and downs over many years, including an uptick in 2012, when more than 500 criminal homicides were reported. They point out that the numbers in recent years have been below those in the early 1990s, when more than 900 homicides were reported some years. And the police say the rate of homicides has slowed some in March compared with earlier in the year.

“Trying to read too much into this is a grave mistake,” said Craig B. Futterman, a clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago. “We’re all just guessing.”

Some officers and residents said they believed that since the McDonald case — and other police shootings that have drawn attention nationwide — Chicago officers may have “backed off,” though others rejected that as an explanation for a rise in violence.

Since January, officers have recorded 20,908 instances in which they stopped, patted down and questioned people for suspicious behavior, compared with 157,346 in the same period last year. Gun seizures are also down: 1,316 guns have been taken off the streets this year compared with 1,413 at this time last year.

In an unusual video address meant to reassure Chicago officers, John J. Escalante, who had been the interim superintendent, told them, “We are aware that there’s a concern among the rank and file about not wanting to be the next YouTube video that goes viral.”

Dean Angelo Sr., the president of the local police union, said public scrutiny had an effect on officers. “They’re being videotaped at every traffic stop,” he said.

But the drop in street stops by the police could be tied to a departmental change that took effect in January, requiring officers to fill out a far more detailed form for each one. The change was imposed after the American Civil Liberties Union raised questions about whether officers were targeting minorities in their stops. The department recently simplified the required paperwork, and the number of stops has since been on the rise, officials say.

Mr. Escalante said in an interview that the department “can’t rely on what we’ve been doing, and we’ve got to start looking at things we can do.”

He said changes had been made, including dispatching 100 new sergeants to the city’s 22 police districts to oversee officers. He also said that he intended to intensify a program in which gang members are urged to end criminal behavior and are offered social services, and another that holds meetings with families of people on the department’s Strategic Subjects List, a database ranking hundreds of people deemed most likely to be victims or perpetrators of shootings.

But Mr. Escalante learned this month that he was not in the running to become the permanent superintendent of the department, and three recommended finalists learned over the weekend that they would not get the job, either. The city has gone months waiting for a permanent replacement for Garry F. McCarthy, the superintendent who was fired after the release of the McDonald video, and while Mr. Emanuel announced that he had chosen Eddie Johnson, a longtime member of Chicago’s force, as the new interim leader, the department’s long-term approach remains uncertain.

In a statement, Adam Collins, a spokesman for Mr. Emanuel, said, “The task before us, and focal point of our efforts, is to rebuild that trust while continuing to expand our crime-fighting strategy and invest in proven prevention programming.”

Some are skeptical. “Right now, there’s no strategy,” said the Rev. Corey Brooks, a minister on the South Side. “Or if there is a strategy, whatever it is, it’s not working.”

At his desk, Mr. Acree, the pastor at Greater St. John, flinches slightly when his cellphone chirps with new text messages.

The police said Friday that they had made no arrests related to the deaths of the family members he has been trying to counsel. The authorities said a replica gun, drugs and money were found at the scene where Mr. Taylor was shot. They said Ms. Wright was apparently not the intended target of the shooting that killed her while she was the passenger in a car.

All of it, the pastor said, had left him with few words. “I make sure they know I will walk with them through this,” he said. “But there’s nothing much I can say. You don’t want to just try to calm people down because you don’t want to give a false sense of security.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/us/vio...es-on.html?_r=0

And the relationship to Organized crime is...?

The obvious connection to Organized Crime is the fact that the street gangs are the likely cause.

Exactly, and why I posted this article.

I'd love to see what that number would be if young black males weren't part of the equation.

Go to heyjackass.com. They have all the statistics. 71.9% are black

@MrWilliams

You should of place this in the Chicago Street Talk section.

@Ralph

Regardless if you remove the them from the equation Chicago still will be averaging about 200+/- a year. It's rooted in gang violence since the bootlegg era.

@JJchicago

Heyjackass have incorrect data too ( not all but a few).

I just double checked the data and the data is correct. You can also check the data from the Chicago Police Department. Over 70% of those who were convicted of murder in the past year and the years before were black. Over 70%!!! About 25% were hispanic and less than 4% white lol. Young black men make up about 3% of the entire population in the United States, and yet according to the Department of Justice they're responsible for more than 50% of all murders committed. That is INSANE. You can't argue the numbers and you certainly can't blame poverty.

Note: I said a few of their data (Heyjackass) is incorrect , another site I can't recall at the moment pointed it out.

1. Don't forget that stats change from year to year and also who's runner up ( and at times first place) in those murders.

2. I can discuss those numbers and Poverty is one of the pillars behind the general crimes. Hence why their so much focus on hustling.

3. I find it Insane that your complacent about murders amongst your own ethnicity.

1. The United States population is irrelevant.
2. Chicago is the most segregated city in the country.

1. Why is it irrelevant? I'd love to hear this one.
2. And? How is segregation responsible for some thug committing murder?

Did you know there are far more poor white people in America than black? Yet, they don't commit nearly as many murders per capita. It's not even close!!! Black people are INSANELY more likely to commit murder than whites.

What are you getting at?

Black people are naturally inferior to white people?

I wouldn't say inferior, but there's obviously something very wrong with the African American community. For example, a large part of their culture is a disgrace. They idolize musicians who sing and rap about committing murder, disrespecting women, selling drugs and owning flashy cars and jewelry. None of this material has any redeeming value.

White people love hip-hop, for one.

Maybe if more blacks grew up in Beverly Hills, and not inner city South Side Chicago, they wouldn't have that problem.

Your Assuming..Far from organized crime..

And yet they don't go out and live like they do in the lyrics. Why do you think that is? There's plenty of poor white hip-hop fans out there. Why ain't they killing more people? That culture doesn't come from white people my friend. It's only entertainment to us. Like a good movie.



Here we go again, blaming poverty. How about taking responsibility for your actions and stop blaming poverty? The stats haven't changed. There's still far more poor white people than poor black people and poor black people kill WAY MORE than poor whites per capita. You wanna continue debating this?

No. This isn't even a debate. It's fucking stupid, is what it is.

believe what you want.

I believe the numbers. The numbers don't lie and if they tell us anything, it's that there's something seriously wrong with the black community. This shouldn't even be a discussion. We should be trying to solve this problem, instead of denying actual facts and playing the victim card, blaming poverty, blaming whitey. You think Morgan Freeman got where he got by playing the victim? What about Obama? Young black men can be anything they want if they are willing to work hard.

@ Beenaround
Your unaware of the full scope or perhaps the microscopes.

@Mightyhealthy
Your opinion is unhealthy and inferior. Improvements is needed..
@ Ralphie
Don't always believe numbers, even they lie too. Some reports or under/over/ not but everything isn't absolute. I've been studying these stats about my people a long time and already aware of more whites are poorer. Your paying attention to rates but not count. Thousands of blacks die by other blacks per year and Thousands of white die by whites per year. Fact

What is inferior about my opinion

it's a global fact that impoverished towns/cities have higher crime rates

people turn to crime as a way to make ends meet (sometimes)

@MightyUnhealthy

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and others inferior are discredit and vanquish forever.

Peace.

Blackfamily,

You completely misunderstand what i was saying. I was asking a question to ralphie. That's NOT what i believe, at all.

This is an example of why I hate to talk to suburban ass people about the streets.


@Ralphie

You were just in a fuckin thread talking about "How fascinating" it was to hear about guys who have been to prison. Yet hear you are bashing the lifestyle that you are clearly infatuated with. And why the fuck do you even care? From Beverly Hills? None of the shit you talk (rather whine) about even affects you at all. And you don't know shit about Chicago or the politics. Or the mob, actually, I have yet to see you make ONE informative post. You just on that fanboy nonsense, funny how no one calls you out though....

You could talk to people like this till you are blue in the face, about the policies behind narcotics trafficking and the politics. You could talk about systemic police corruption, privatized prisons and the links to the judicial system.
I would never look at a Mexican and be like " Damn, your country is fucked, all that narcotics trafficking and violence, why don't y'all get it together" , cause I know it's more complicated then that.

I don't know shit about the mob? That's hilarious coming from somebody who has no idea who I am. I can't have an opinion because I don't live in the ghetto like you? Unlike you, I actually went to college and graduated, and made something of myself. My grandfather was born and raised in the poorest of poorest circumstances in the Bronx, and neither he or his nine siblings turned to crime. They all made something of themselves. What are you doing with your life?

And no, I'm no fanboy. I find bums entertaining. I find you entertaining.

@ Mightyhealthy
I apologize and didnt re-read the text. I was at work and got caught up with that character.

@ CabriniGreen

+ 2,700,000

@The retard Ralphie


Dude there are lawyers, working professionals, property owners, all kind of upstanding people on this site, and I count myself amongst them. Don't hit me with that college shit when you are on a site about crime, REAL LIFE CRIME at that. Again, I see people like you and question why the fuck you even replied in the thread. It's like the guy that got all EMOTIONAL cause someone asked about a gang vs the mob. The underlying animosity is obvious, otherwise why would one even respond.

And I don't have to know who you are to know you know NOTHING ABOUT CRIME IN GENERAL, it's fuckin obvious. I like how you sidestepped the prison question, what did you find so FASCINATING about an Italian guy getting locked up that is so repulsive to you if it's a black person. Man, matter of fact just shut the fuck up, you should just read and be happy you can live vicariously to bring some excitement to your boring ass life.

And for the record, I've had disagreements with guys like Ivey, (who I do actually like) who's from Utah, yet I never pulled that card with him cause he obviously knows his shit. I've yet to see you post any fuckin thing worth reading yet... I'll wait....

Awwww I hurt your feelings. You're black right? Hey, I'm sorry. Life isn't always fair my friend. I love how a black guy is claiming to know what it's like to be white and Italian lol. Guess what motherfucker..I'm Italian American!!..with family in the Bronx, Westchester and Staten Island. Yeah I'm born and raised in luxury, you're right about that, but my family has roots all over. Me finding incarceration fascinating is pretty normal..especially if you're born and raised in a $20 million mansion in Beverly Hills.

Ooh and for the record, IM one of the ones guys like you are always whining about. Like," Why can't they go to school, or not sell drugs, or hold a job", yada, ya da...


It fit every cliche you can name, yet if you met me in person you would NEVER BE ABLE TO TELL. Cause that's how MEN carry themselves, did you really bring up your goddamn GRANDFATHER? I grew up IN A CRIME FAMILY, yet was still smart enough to get skipped two grades.
Lol... Dude stop it, and answer the fuckin question, why were you fascinated by PRISON, MR COLLEGE GRADUATE? Why weren't you in that thread bashing those guys for living a street life? ( and turning their life around, I might add) Cause they were Italian? Lame as hell.....
Dude if we were in classroom, I would mop the floor with you, and I suspect if you were in the streets you would be a pussy there too...