There are real numbers behind those headlines, and crime nationwide has increased, and is of grave concern to residents and lawmakers alike. The words “law and order” might seem benign enough but they have also been a dog whistle to white voters in majority Black urban areas, and that fear, followed by panic, has fueled a narrative designed to not just make media bucks, but also to score votes among the electorate, and especially, but not wholly, on the local level.
This was especially seen in the recent mayoral election in Chicago between the “tough on crime” candidate Paul Vallas and his progressive opponent Brandon Johnson; and, then adding race to the mix, with Vallas white, and Johnson Black; the result was a mixture of racial politics designed to not only appeal to each other’s political base, but also to voters in this long segregated city.
The win by Johnson has galvanized the political and racial rhetoric of the city, even weeks after he was sworn in, with many white residents claiming that he was “no good”, a mere pawn of his former employer, the Chicago Teachers Union, and other unprintable names, the kindest being that he was a socialist.
Johnson’s latest, and most targeted, appointment is Larry Snelling as Chicago Police Superintendent to replace former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s chief, David Brown, who faced a barrage of criticism, from all sides, after a series of missteps that cost her, and him, national negative headlines, (including her primary loss, and his subsequent resignation) as the city’s crime rate soared, especially after the looting following the death of George Floyd, when after peaceful demonstrators went home a rag tag force of looters swarmed downtown shops on posh Michigan Avenue, as well as State Street.
Snelling who has garnered rave reviews from within the force as well as without, was confirmed by the Chicago City Council in a 48 to 0 vote, and the 54 year old Chicago native earned a strong approval rating during the NATO meeting in 2012 when world leaders gathered in the city among a swarm of protestors, and news cameras, anxious to catch any disturbance of the meeting. By all accounts Snelling coordinated the security efforts with the Secret Service to great acclaim.
That success behind him, he has promised to make accountability his watchword for police actions, and to be fair in its application, and after being sworn in he told those gathered in the hall, “Anybody will tell you this. I hold officers accountable. [B]ut when our officers are held accountable, they have to be held accountable fairly.”
Snelling also said that he needed the public to understand that police officers often face dangerous situations, and, in that vein, to judge them fairly. He asked listeners to imagine, “five, six officers in the middle of a crowd who want to hurt you, and you’re outnumbered 100 to 5, you don’t really know what that feels like.”
Chicago crime was once primarily seen in Black and brown neighborhoods on the West and South Sides, has now spread to the more affluent areas Lincoln Park, Lakeview, and River North, where armed gangs, using stolen cars, suddenly appear to rob citizens walking their dogs, going to and from work, or exiting their vehicles.
Subsequent resident fears have notably enlarged the racial rhetoric, and on X, formerly known as Twitter, those fears have reached a fever pitch, fueling an already heated atmosphere.
The Chicago Police Department, for the month of August of 2023 reported that murders decreased to 37 percent; criminal sexual assault increased by 35 percent; non violent thefts increased to 29 percent, with year to date murders reaching 26 percent; and robberies to 20 percent, and motor vehicle theft, to 22.8 percent.
Perception, as many a sage has said, is one tenth of the law, and local media, the Chicago Tribune, as well as the Chicago Sun Times, and especially CWBC Chicago have given priority to crime news, but often do not show that other large American cities face the same dilemma, and many residents are led to feel as if their city is the only one traumatized by crime.
Looking at those other cities, The New York Times recently reported that other large cities have seen their largest increases "in modern life." but while some readers might have considered this hyperbole, the stats do show that violent crime is still higher than before the Covid pandemic, said the nonprofit Center on Criminal Justice, showing that Chicago joins Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Denver in increased rates.
There are exceptions: in the first half of 2023 there were fewer homicides, across the nation, a 9 percent drop, and assaults have also dropped to 5.6 percent in the ten cities that the Council examined.
The Brookings Institute has noted that “while stoking fears on crime is an age-old American election tactic, something feels different about its salience in the pandemic era landscape. Faced with slow recovering urban cores,” there is a redeployment of crime “as the primary cause of a host of complex and interconnected issues,” be they pandemic office closures, general mayhem, or fear itself.
Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, seemed to have hit the accelerator when he moved headquarters from downtown Chicago to Miami, followed by Boeing, Inc., moving its headquarters to Texas from the nearby suburb of Deerfield. While these moves are a “fraction of Chicago’s 1.3 million jobs, the fact that it happened scored national headlines, reported Bloomberg in September 2022.
Rebranding, as well as reallocation, will be a monumental task for the new chief, as he faces the hot lights of the media, as well as those social media voices.
Brookings did say that the perception of crime was a major concern and fear in downtown areas was growing, their qualitative analysis of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Seattle., not helped by “high profile incidents of violence that occurred downtown as exacerbating factors.”
These incidents notwithstanding the study also told only one part of the story, and while “Respondents overall perceptions of rising crime were not wholly unfounded, but they tended to reflect national and citywide crime rhetoric and sensationalized media coverage rather than understanding of where and how crime actually occurs within their cities.”
Notably for Chicago, the Brookings staff found that in 2019 and 2022, “there was a 48% increase in property crimes in Chicago” and similar increases in other cities, Philadelphia, New York and Seattle, but ”downtown Chicago accounted for just 6% of the citywide increase in property crime and less than 1% of the citywide increase in violent crime.”
Likewise a small change in downtown crime can have an outsized public perception.
A significant impact on public perception is that of burgeoning retail crime, but history has shown that surges are not unique to this time, and while political conservatives and liberals disagree on what measures should be taken: tougher sentencing, versus, addressing poverty, investment in poorer areas, or tougher sentencing, among other steps, the numbers that we see may not always be accurate.
As Yahoo News pointed out in August, “Skeptics say there’s strong reason to doubt that the supposed shoplifting surge is even real. They point out that the only data to support the idea comes from retailers themselves, who have a strong financial incentive to blame underperformance on theft rather than mismanagement or poor business strategy.”
Taking another look at retail crime that has plagued cities like Chicago, and other cities is this from themessenger.com: “. . . solid figures are elusive, and a lack of good data isn’t just a headache for statisticians. Information scarcity means misdiagnosis of the problem and misallocation of resources, experts say.”
“For example, if a store owner mistakenly believes shrink is the result of theft when the real issue is a delivery problem, they might squander money on extra security when a stern conversation with a supplier is the more constructive solution, experts say.” And, add employee theft, and a misreporting of smash and grab type robberies, after hours, which are often mistakenly recorded as shoplifting not the robberies that they are.
It’s going to be a tough haul for Snelling, and it will take his legendary humility, skill, and patience to conquer both the perception and the reality of crime in Chicago..
