Leftist Policies Continue to Fail Chicago, but They’d Rather Just Blame the Police!
As President Obama finalizes his tenure in the White House, the city that he calls home has completely spiraled out of control.
Homicide has claimed the lives of over 700 individuals in Chicago this year, which is on pace to have its highest murder rate in about 20 years. There are about 10 shootings every day, with gun violence attributable for almost 650 of this year’s homicides. Tragically, detectives are unable to solve most of these crimes. Forbes.com reported in September that at least one person had been murdered daily in Chicago since February 2015.
It is arguably more dangerous to grow up in the inner-city of Chicago than to serve overseas in wartime Iraq and Afghanistan.
Niall McCarthy put it in great perspective for Forbes: “Since 2001, Chicago has experienced 7,916 murders (as of September 06, 2016). The number of Americans killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was 2,384 and 4,504 respectively since 2001.”
It’s easy for rabble rousing-groups like Black Lives Matter to sit back and continue railing against the police, but Chicago officers are hardly responsible for the skyrocketing murder rate. So, what has led to the spike in 2016? Many have their theories.
FBI Director James Comey has suggested that the “Ferguson effect” is at play. He believes that police are afraid to do the work necessary to make inroads in the community, for fear that the “viral video effect” of one wrong move or word will damage their reputations and careers forever.
The number of police officers on the Windy City streets has actually decreased in recent years. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel claims he has made plans to hire 1,000 additional officers. Emanuel campaigned on the promise to restock the ranks of the Chicago PD, but has yet to do so after five years in office. There’s plenty of data to show that stocking up on additional police units helps stop crime. Leaders in the New York City Police Department have long been proponents of such measures.
Some anti-Second Amendment groups insist that better gun control measures are the answer. But Chicago already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.
While many of the shootings can be linked to gang violence, what is often overlooked is what leads young men to join gangs in the first place. Facing extreme poverty and a lack of opportunity, many turn to gangs as a means to survive.
Almost half of 20- to 24-year-old black males in Chicago are out of school and out of work. Instead of encouraging entrepreneurship and removing barriers to employment, government officials have decided again and again to raise the minimum wage, which economists widely agree harm the poor the most.
On the education front, Democrats have dumped tons of money into Chicago’s public education system, but the funding has done virtually nothing to change the tragically corrupt system. The unions have secured deals to ensure an 80 percent increase in teacher salaries since 1998.
As the Illinois Policy reported in April, Chicago teachers have “the highest lifetime salaries in the nation compared with the largest school districts in the U.S.” and “diverted almost $3 billion intended to fund pensions towards school salaries instead.”
So, what does the city have to show for it? Chicago’s youth remains poor — without hope and without opportunity.
Leftist policy initiatives have failed
Chicago’s most vulnerable. Albert Einstein is widely attributed with defining insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” As we ring in the new year, it’s time to stop the insanity that is failed Big Government, Democrat policies, and give the youth in Chicago a fighting chance to make it in America. (For more from the author of “Leftist Policies Continue to Fail Chicago, but They’d Rather Just Blame the Police!” please click HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
