The missing gang photo matters (op-ed)

In May 2011 Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago. That November Mayor Emanuel attended a memorial honoring 260 Chicago public school students killed by violence during the previous three years. Immediately after Mayor Emanuel took office, he became known for personally calling the family of each young gun violence victim.

In 2012 the Chicago Tribune reported twenty four students were fatally shot during the school year, four fewer than in the 2010-11 year. But the overall shooting toll -- 319 -- was the highest in four years, a 22% increase from the previous school year. This data was under a headline that said: Number of CPS students shot rises, as does fear of more to come.

And more shootings came for the rest of Emanuel’s first term. 

Their frequency may have turned the mayor’s personal calls into a monthly ritual.

Emanuel was reelected in 2015.

That October The Daily Beast declared Chicago America’s mass-shooting capital. The next month, another child was killed, but the motive behind it turned the mayor’s personal contact with the family into the 9/11 of phone calls.

The child was targeted because of a feud the killers had with the boy’s father, who was a member of a rival gang.

After the incident I wrote an article called The Missing Gang Photo and said: Chicago’s police superintendent said the murder was “probably the most abhorrent, cowardly, unfathomable crime” that he has witnessed in 35 years of policing.

A 9-year-old boy was lured into an alley and shot several times in the head and back. A local priest described the murder as a “new low”. He also said, “This wasn’t a drive-by. This wasn’t a spray of bullets. A baby was assassinated.”

And what made the situation more frustrating for law enforcement was the father of the victim refused to cooperate with the police, but the father said he wanted to see justice.

I stated that the community wanted to see a gang photo similar to the gang unity photo that circulated during the Baltimore riots.

But the difference between the riot photo and the photo I describe as “missing” is the picture would capture gang members not in a temporary truce, but terminating their gang memberships because the child assassination began an era of degeneracy Chicago gangs can never recover from.

Five months ago I wrote another article called The Gang Photo is Still Missing. The assassins were caught, but it was revealed that they were going to torture the boy by cutting off his ears and fingers, and after hearing this news, the father retaliated by shooting the girlfriend of one of the men charged with the murder. (He didn’t retaliate because of the murder. It was because they were going to disrespect him by torturing the boy.) The police said the boy “was captured and killed by a monster.” I stated as long as the gang photo is missing the police label of “monster” echoes across the country about gang members in Chicago. This makes the phrase “suspected gang member” synonymous with “alleged monster” to a jury in a police shooting trial with an unarmed victim suspected of gang ties.

Now in September 2016 Chicago’s gun deaths have surpassed the 425 total of 2015. Ninety people were killed in August making it the deadliest month since October 1997 when 79 people were murdered.

During Mayor Emanuel’s first term police said as more gang leaders are sent to prison the gangs they leave behind become splintered, and the fracturing of larger gangs into smaller ones has doubled the number of factions and conflicts. One gang member said, “There is no one to control this. So it has become haywire.”

This gang fracturing has obviously continued into the mayor’s second term because each killing has the possibility of creating new factions with new rivals.

Somewhere online there are group photos of newly formed gang factions in Chicago, but the only gang photo that matters is still missing.

First published in New Pittsburgh Courier 9/21/16