Chicago not a “hellhole,” but the facts show it’s a living hell for far too many people – Wirepoints

By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

Gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey made a big blunder when he recently dubbed Chicago a “hellhole.” Chicagoans were always going to defend their city in face of such a blanket statement. And it’s far too harsh considering the many things that still make Chicago one of the most attractive big cities in the world. 

The consequence was that Bailey’s choice of words, and not the city leadership’s failures, became the center of attention. The media and pundits readily pushed back against the idea of Chicago having deep problems just because an outsider went too far in criticizing the city. 

Bailey would have been far better off calling Chicago “a living hell for far too many people,” especially for many of Chicago’s minorities. The data overwhelmingly backs that up. 

The families of children shot or killed, the victims of violent assault, the people terrorized by random crime in their neighborhoods, the students stuck in empty, failing schools, the unemployed with no hope of a job – that’s misery that shouldn’t be ignored. Yes, there are similar problems in other big cities, but that doesn’t mean Chicago should get a pass for the pain its broken policies inflict. 

Start with the fact that just two weeks ago, seven minors were shot in a period of just seventeen hours. One kid suffered gunshot wounds in South Chicago. Another 15-year-old was shot and killed in Little Village. Four teens were shot in Englewood. A 6-year-old was also shot in West Woodlawn. All in seventeen hours.  

For the parents of those children – and for anybody in those neighborhoods that has kids – that can only be described as a living hell. Kids are being shot through living room windows. While they’re playing outside. Hanging out on the front porch. Or riding in a car. Even little kids have become fair game for gangs in Chicago. That’s misery to many families who want nothing to do with crime but are increasingly part of the collateral damage.

Nearly 250 Chicago children have been victims of homicide since 2018 – 50 of them under 11 years old.

Carjackings, too, are creating a living hell for far too many people. The number has hit 1,200 so far this year, or about 5 a day. One carjacking every five hours. Chicago is on path to hit a new record this year, triple the rate compared to just three years ago.

What makes these attacks even worse is that 76 percent of the carjackings are classified as “aggravated,” generally indicating the use of a weapon during a hijacking. The risks of getting shot or killed are growing.

And then there were the more than 400,000 high priority crime incidents last year to which there were no police available for dispatch at the time of the crime, a problem Wirepoints uncovered in June. Those high priority calls include incidents which represent “an imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage/loss,” or when “timely police action…has the potential to affect the outcome of an incident.”

It must have been terrifying for the 15,000 Chicagoans who were victims of assaults in progress last year with no police available for response. Ditto for the 1,350 people that were shot or the nearly 900 stabbed for which dispatch calls went unanswered. The full list of incidents is included here.

For yet other Chicagoans, the lack of jobs and opportunities is a living hell. That’s especially true for black Chicagoans who in August faced an unemployment rate of over 14.3 percent, more than double the unemployment rate for black Americans nationwide of just 6.4 percent. The citywide average for all Chicagoans was 5.8 percent. 

Even before Covid, the SunTimes reported in 2019 that “about 45% of black men in Chicago age 20-24 were neither working nor in school in 2017…Nearly 20% of Latino men in that age group were out of work and not in school.”

It’s hard to imagine what that joblessness combined with the recent surge in inflation and rents – plus the surrounding crime – is doing to the next generation.

Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union’s management of the district has also been disastrous for children, most recently during Covid. The district’s shutdowns, forced remote learning and draconian mitigation practices – not to mention the walkouts – made education a miserable experience for both parents and students. That’s captured in the decline of student reading proficiencies.

In 2019, only 27 percent of CPS students could read at grade level. By 2021, just 21.5 percent could. That’s a 20 percent drop in reading proficiency in two years. The results for math were even worse.

For many parents, it’s got to be an extra level of hell to send your kids to some of the empty, failing CPS schools we recently highlighted.

Take, for example, parents stuck in sending their children to Tilden High School, a near-deserted building at just 11% capacity (1608 seats, just 172 students). Just 2 percent of students can read at grade level.

Or consider Uplift High School where, even though there are just as many employees as there are students, only 3 percent of students are reading proficient.

It would be wrong, though, to assume the misery is confined to poor and minority communities. Examples are now beginning to spread throughout the city.

We recently covered the increase in violence that’s hitting the city’s lakefront communities. Crime is up significantly since pre-Covid, pre-George Floyd 2019, with Edgewater alone experiencing an overall 40 percent increase due to far more robberies and thefts. It’s the same downtown (Police District 1), where crime is up 37 percent vs. 2019, with motor vehicle thefts alone up a stunning 284 percent. Uptown and Lakeview crime is up 31 percent.

And take this past Labor Day weekend in Lakewood, when a young lady was walking in broad daylight. Three bad guys drove up, exited their car and assaulted her and took her possessions. Nobody came out to give her a hand even after the perps were gone. She was left there screaming by herself.

She was lucky to be alive, but it must be terrifying for her now as she replays the scene in her head over and over again. Just watch the CWB video.

Chicago is a beautiful place with all of its great assets still intact. But until Chicago’s political elite are held accountable for failing to support the police and enforce the law; for keeping children trapped in CPS instead of giving them options; for embracing equity over merit and competence in everything they do; and for continuously hiking taxes instead of reducing burdens, expect more and more Chicagoans to experience hell – in one form or another.

Read more from Wirepoints:

• Even more bad facts about Chicago Public Schools’ 20 emptiest schools
• CTA crime problem begs for real deterrence: Half-measures won’t do
• CPS’ radical agenda gets uglier: ‘Equity’ video promotes looting and burning
• Lightfoot’s Election-Year Budget For Chicago Is No ‘True Path’ To Recovery and Stability
• Chicago crime statistics: Even worse than you think
• Sexual assaults, car thefts and shootings: A growing new reality for Chicago’s lakefront communities