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OPINION

Pointing guns and fingers: Chicago holds sergeants accountable for spike in crime

By Carleigh Turner, Design Editor

turner59@miamioh.edu

Chicago is on track to see 700 murders in 2016, according to DNAinfo.

This alarming number has many people searching for answers and someone to blame. Interim Police Supt. John Escalante believes holding sergeants accountable for the "success and operation of their units" may help keep Chicagoans safe, according to DNAinfo.

The number of murders in Chicago has doubled since this time last year. Although I am up for any method to try and make those numbers stop growing, I do not know what is going to get this city back on its feet again.

Talks of better education, after school programs and stricter gun laws have all been brought to the table, and yet the numbers continue to rise.

The situation begins to feel a little hopeless.

Escalante plans to use a data-driven strategy called CompStat to closely monitor crime trends and police operations. Escalante also plans to judge police sergeants by the effectiveness of officers under their supervision, according to DNAinfo.

This plan may sound good on paper, and it has the potential to decrease murder rates. However, it seems as if the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is just distancing itself further from Chicago's violence.

Seven hundred murders in one year is a tremendous number of deaths, and when you start to put faces and names to that statistic, the number gets even more horrifying. Especially because the victims of these shootings are not isolated to only gang members.

Shamiya Adams, 11, was fatally struck July 19, 2014, by a stray bullet. She was at a sleepover. A picture on the Chicago Sun Times Homicide Watch page shows her lime-green casket being carried to its final resting place.

Sophomore at Loyola University in Chicago, Khrystyna Trinchuk, was shot as an unintended target in a gang-related shooting Jan. 22, 2016, while walking home to get her wallet. Luckily, she survived. However, Trinchuk is not the only Loyola student to have been shot in the past three years.

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Twenty-three-year-old student Mutahir Rauf was shot in December 2014 and did not survive.

Miami students are incredibly lucky to go to school in an area that is relatively safe - where stories of students dying from shootings are rare. However, this is not the case for those living in cities such as Chicago.

Everyday, children like Shamiya Adams are confronted with violence and dodge stray bullets. So, it is difficult for me to understand how simple data monitoring will be able to fix that.

I would love to see more of a community engagement from all neighborhoods in the Chicago area. It will take the "village" of Chicago to start addressing the sickening number of deaths occurring everyday in the city.

The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence (ICAH) is working tirelessly to help put an end to gun violence across the nation. The website opens with a startling statistic: "Every three hours a real bullet hits a real child."

This is what people need to think about as we try to tackle this violence.

These shootings in Chicago are not isolated incidents. The 700 people that may get murdered in Chicago this year are not all gun-wielding gang bangers. They are mothers, daughters, fathers and sons.

We owe these people more than just checking a data system. We owe them hands-on, concrete initiatives to stop this violence. We do not need to bury perfectly healthy children who just got caught in the crossfire anymore. It is up to us.

Come on, Chicago, let's get it together.

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