FOX 32 Sunday: Reporter’s Notebook: Chicago’s shocking statistics
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By Mike Flannery, FOX 32 News Political Editor - bio | email
CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) -
After our discussion about Chicago's blood-dimmed tide of murder, it's worth reviewing the shocking statistics.
Police manage to solve barely half of the killings here, even two years after the victim's been buried. Homicide detectives in other big cities do a lot better. Police here, with some justification, point to the code of silence imposed by Chicago's feared underworld: 59 major gangs, now split into a mind-boggling 625 feuding factions, with 70,000 to 125,000 more or less "members."
They are cash-based businesses, fueled most of all by drug profits. A cocaine kilogram (2.2 pounds) can be grown in Colombia or Peru for $2,000; delivered wholesale to Chicago for $30,000; with local gangsters retailing it on the street for $100,000.
Chicago's been here before; at the height of alcohol Prohibition in 1930, the murder rate was 14.6 per 100,000 residents; by 1940. Repeal had cut it by more than half to 7.1.
Al Capone-era gangsters no longer controlled the booze business...and no longer had monetary incentives to kill off their competitors.
Look, it's not for me or other parents to contemplate the prospect of legalized cocaine, heroin or other hard drugs. The grim reality, though, is that they're all easily available right now, with the profits paying for and motivating murder. It's time to confront that reality.
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