Feds, state, county join anti-crime blitzkrieg in two violent districts

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens during a Friday news conference about efforts to combat violence in the Harrison and Englewood police districts. | John J. Kim~Sun-Times

Updated: March 12, 2012 8:05AM

The Chicago Police Department’s plan to target gangs and drug markets in the city’s two most violent police districts is paying early dividends and will now be supplemented by an unprecedented infusion of county, state and federal resources.

In the month since the Englewood and Harrison districts were saturated with additional gang and narcotics officers, homicides are down 63 percent over the same period a year ago, while the number of shootings has dropped by 36 percent.

And after a 53.8 percent spike in the city’s overall homicides, the trend is going down. Since Jan. 24, there have been just four homicides in Chicago, compared to 19 during the same period a year ago.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Supt. Garry McCarthy called the early returns “promising.” But, they are well aware that it’s only a snapshot that could change in an instant.

What’s more important is the fact that the city’s commitment to stop the bleeding in Chicago’s two most violent districts has now convinced the federal government to do the same.

Forty Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents will work with Chicago Police on short and long-term narcotics missions in the Englewood and Harrison districts, while FBI agents join “shooting investigative teams.”

The U.S. Marshall Service will join Chicago Police on “fugitive apprehension missions” while the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms uses its Strike Force to assist in making gun buys in the two districts.

The IRS will target the assets of local drug dealers and the Illinois Department of Corrections will conduct “zero tolerance” compliance checks of parolees.

And the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney will review all gun cases in the Englewood and Harrison districts to pinpoint cases that can be prosecuted on the federal level.

“We are layering our strategies in a comprehensive manner that has probably never been done before in this country,” McCarthy said during a news conference at the Harrison District, 3151 W. Harrison.

“A day without shootings, 56 hours without a shooting, like we did a couple of days ago. A week without a murder in this city. These are benchmarks that build upon our successes. That is not declaring victory. That is not boasting. [But], these federal partners of ours recognize exactly what’s going on and they’re stepping in to assist us.”

Emanuel said the feds would never have joined forces with the city, if not for the new deployment strategy and new leadership in the two districts that together accounted for 25 percent of the murders and shootings in Chicago last year.

“It’s our responsibility to go put the flag down and try to own it. Because of that, while all those [federal] resources have existed, they have not [been] focused in a concentrated fashion to come in behind where the Police Department has acted. That’s what’s unique here,” Emanuel said.

“Because the city put our flag down in our own neighborhoods, the feds can come in behind. They couldn’t go in front. They come in behind [and] supplement, back up, reinforce.”

On Jan. 23, McCarthy kicked Englewood District Commander Anthony Carothers upstairs — and replaced him with respected gang enforcement commander Leo Schmitz — as part of a larger plan to stop the bloodshed in the two most violent districts.

The idea was to saturate Englewood and Harrison with resources, put the gangs and drug markets out of business, round up the fugitives and make the clean-up permanent with help from a “network of community, faith-based and government resources.”

The social network is still a work in progress, but the districts can’t wait much longer, according to Democratic U.S. Representatives Bobby Rush and Danny Davis, who joined the mayor at Friday’s news conference.

“You can’t arrest your way out of this problem. ... If there are not jobs behind this, we’re just repeating the same thing that we’ve done before,” Rush said.

“In a community where the drop-out rate is greater than the murder rate, you’ve got to deal with the drop-out rate. The back-fill is very, very important.”