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Mary Schmich has a good column today on the spring rash of homicides in the city. She talked to DePaul sociologist Greg Scott, whose observations track with what I’ve been reading and hearing for awhile–the CPD and the feds have done an admirable job breaking up Chicago gangs. “Chicago’s gangs are no longer the big, centralized regimes of legend, Scott said. The problem now is thousands of small drug crews, loosely bound by the same name, like franchises; most members barely make minimum wage.” In other words, the head is gone, but the tail still wags–the drug trade is more distributed and less hierarchical than it used to be.
In short: there’s reason to believe that this spring’s crime wave is the result of success, not failure. Which isn’t to say that the success was a waste of time or a mistake, just that the next step is going to be complicated and difficult.
