Activists call for outreach to stem gun violence

Former Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan urges city to give troubled neighborhoods ‘a reason to put the guns down’

Max Kapustin, Chicago Police Deputy Chief Ernest Cato III, Arne Duncan, Susan Lee, Eric Cumberbatch, Anne Tremblay, and Autry Phillips pose for a photo at Wednesday’s symposium. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

Max Kapustin, Chicago Police Deputy Chief Ernest Cato III, Arne Duncan, Susan Lee, Eric Cumberbatch, Anne Tremblay, and Autry Phillips pose for a photo at Wednesday’s symposium. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

CHICAGO — Community activists and Chicago Police brass called for a hands-on approach to stemming the city’s gun violence, including building relationships between police and gangs, at a symposium held Wednesday on the South Side.

“Policing is changing,” said Chicago Police Deputy Chief Ernest Cato III as part of a panel including community groups during the Chicago Striving for Peace Symposium held Wednesday at the Zhou B Arts Center in Bridgeport. He said the days of cops pulling up to a corner in a paddy wagon and ordering everyone to get in were over.

“I don’t think we can arrest our way out of this,” said Arne Duncan, former Chicago Public Schools chief and U.S. education secretary, and now managing partner of Emerson Collective, which funds Chicago CRED and other violence-prevention groups in the city. “I don’t think we can incarcerate our way out of this,” he added, insisting that the essential key was to give kids on the city’s West and South sides “a reason to put down the guns.”

“What does work is identifying the needs of each individual in a community,” Cato said, and working to “empower the community” to solve its own problems, social and economic.

“Outreach works,” said Autry Phillips, executive director of Target Area DevCorp, a South Side community group. He said the group had successfully recruited a gang member who’d gone by the nickname “Will Kill” to work on violence prevention and intervention. Phillips said respect was a two-way street between cops and gangs and key to defusing a culture of violence. He drew parallels with the longterm campaign against smoking in that first the society has to recognize that the “normal” is not sustainable and that it has to be addressed to compel change.

“The strategy is real,” Cato said. “Folks should know we’re working together,” with community groups and with gang members. He added that key to mutual respect was also respecting the boundaries between cops and gangs as well as community activists. “We all share the same goal,” Cato said, “and that goal is to reduce violence and give our children a better place to live.”

Duncan said progress had already been made, but “we have to accelerate the pace of change.”

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“I don’t think we can arrest our way out of this. I don’t think we can incarcerate our way out of this.”

Arne Duncan (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

Duncan cited how Chicago was on its way to the third straight annual decline in shootings and murders since a spike that attracted national attention in 2016. “While the improvement is real, this is not a ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment,” he said.

Pointing out that Chicago’s murder rate, at 20.8 for every 100,000 residents, is still more than double the murder rates of New York City and Los Angeles combined, Duncan said, “The facts are pretty clear, and the facts are pretty stark.”

“Street violence is an independent justice system,” said Teny Gross, an Israeli Defense Force veteran who nows heads the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago. “If we don’t trust the justice system, we create our own justice.

“We’ve got to restore the legitimacy of our government,” he said, adding, “We try to tell people to stop shooting. But what have we got for you? We’ve got nothing.”

Max Kapustin, of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said the city’s murder rate in the Roaring ‘20s heyday of Al Capone was about what it is now, 20 per 100,000 residents, but topped 30 during the drug-fueled gang wars of 30 years ago. Over that time span, Chicago murder rates ran parallel with those in New York and Los Angeles, but since 1990 those two coastal cities had dramatically lowered their murder rates while Chicago had not.

Throughout the decade, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made the point that New York and Los Angeles had stricter gun laws than Chicago, a point recently echoed by his successor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot. But Wednesday’s symposium emphasized the need for neighborhood investment, led by community groups that know the issues an area is dealing with.

“We have to heal environments and individuals,” said Eric Cumberbatch, executive director of the New York Mayor’s Office to Prevent Gun Violence.

Phillips said Chicago had allocated $11 million for neighborhood outreach to address gun violence, but that $50 million or even $100 million would do more to solve the problem.

Gross added, “If you really want black and brown people to stop shooting each other, you can’t say we don’t have the money.”

Cumberbatch said the budget for his office was $36 million. Anne Tremblay, director of the Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development in the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office, said her budget was about $35 million. Both said that enabled them to contract community groups to address the issues. They also emphasized that adequate, assured funding meant the groups could feel comfortable working together on the same issue rather than feeling they had to fight each other for scraps.

“We’re at the beginning here,” said Susan Lee, a former Los Angeles violence expert who came to Chicago in 2016 to directly confront the city’s gun woes, and who was recently hired by Lightfoot as deputy mayor of public safety. “We hope to get where they are.”

Tremblay called for police, city administrations, and community groups to “be bold,” adding, “You can’t be afraid.” She said inevitably there’d be mistakes and missteps, especially in engaging with gang members, not all of whom are wiling to embrace reforms, but she added that the gains to be had from such initiatives produced results.

“Clearly, we need to be open-minded,” Lee said. “We are still in a crisis moment here. We are not over it.” But she added it was critical to “move forward together.”