Hit back at youth mobs with something stronger: sports

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A member of the Guardian Angels (left) and Chicago Police officers keep watch near the Red Line stop at Chicago and State last week after incidents of youth mobs attacking and robbing individuals. | Keith Hale~Sun-Times

Updated: September 29, 2011 12:41AM

I could have been in a gang.

I’m sure of it.

If I had grown up in poverty, perhaps abused, without parents who cared about me, with no one as a mentor or role model except the bigger guys who either kicked my ass or defended me, there is no question about it.

I was sensitive and restless as a kid. The one quality could have been beaten out of me, the other exploited.

So as our city frets over the recent flurry of ‘‘flash mobs’’ — groups of young people suddenly beating or robbing citizens — in the Streeterville neighborhood and nearby wealthy and picturesque areas of Chicago, I’m thinking: Why are these kids doing this?

Yet, I already know.

We all do.

Essentially: Why not?

Though delicately treading analysts have been loathe to say anything politically incorrect, let’s be clear here. As the New York Times stated of the flash mob crimes, ‘‘The suspects were black teenagers. The victims were white.’’

If we’re afraid to talk about racial facts like that, then we have much larger problems ever getting to a solution.

Are any of these kids in gangs? I don’t know. Certainly there are bad guys in the mix, genuine bad guys who will be a crushing burden on society until the day they are lowered into the ground. But there assuredly also are kids who were just led astray, who were in on the new ‘‘cool’’ thing and have no idea how they have halfway ruined their lives.

I could have been one of those guys.

How do I know?

Back when I was a young teenager in Peoria, I remember getting on a city bus with a bunch of pals one sunny day, and somebody — was it I? I honestly don’t recall — had a slingshot and we opened a back bus window, which you could do then, and we had ball bearings, and somebody, at the urging of the others, randomly shot out the massive plate-glass windows of businesses we passed.

Nothing happened. Nobody was caught. Nobody knew. But what were we — me and my zit-faced, hormonally flooded white buddies — but a roving, pre-texting, criminally excited flash mob?

What saved us — what saved me, for sure — was the ingrained sense that this kind of stuff was wrong, that if our parents ever found out, we were finished forever.

And sports.

Safety, rules for the masses

Sports —hard, organized, methodical sports — gave meaning and discipline to our drifting lives.

Do you really think teenagers from the South Side (which is where the addresses of the few charged adults indicate they are from) would do such heinous stuff if they had safe neighborhoods and parental oversight and sports programs that were fun and cool and safe to be involved in?

Oh, yeah, there are bad guys in the world. Let’s not forget evil. And the mind of a mob is a fascinating thing, at once more intelligent, creative and primally vicious than any individual consciousness. I could argue there is very little difference between the collective mind of a jacked-up football team and a lynch mob other than coaching, preparation, sportsmanship, rules and referees.

Consider for a moment the shooting last week that left two girls, ages 2 and 7, wounded by gunfire at Avondale Park. (Yes, the Northwest Side, and all sides, have their issues.) The girls were playing in a sandbox and were struck by bullets intended for young men playing basketball nearby.

The shooter, 22-year-old Maniac Latin Disciples member Antonio Bucio, was aiming at rival Latin Kings.

Playing basketball. In a sandbox. At a park.

If our parks and playgrounds aren’t safe, then what do we have in this world other than double-speak and anarchy?

Everybody knows Bulls superstar Derrick Rose’s wondrous story of making it out of Englewood and neighborhood Murray Park to the top of the heap.

But this isn’t about superstardom. In a way, Rose’s story is an unfortunate fable, giving false hope to hordes of youngsters who have a speck of his talent.

This is about sports for the many, for the common, for the boys who need something to do, to get excited about, to sacrifice for, to get tired and calmed while doing and then go home and go to sleep. In safety.

‘War’ alone won’t fix this

A long, hot summer is coming to Chicago. The economy is bad, and there are few jobs for teenagers, even fewer for minorities.

Poor teens sitting around, doing nothing, unmotivated, afraid to go to the playground — that’s devil’s stuff.

New Chicago police chief Garry McCarthy and new mayor Rahm Emanuel have said they are going all out to stop flash mobs, and McCarthy has declared ‘‘an ongoing and relentless war’’ against the Maniac Latin Disciples.

I mean, just think of that name. Like the Elks, or Knights of Columbus, don’t you think? I shouldn’t jest, but confessed shooter Bucio has a tattoo on his face of a ‘‘D’’ with devil’s horns coming out of it — his gang symbol.

It would laughable and pitiable if it weren’t so sinister.

Yes, we can squeeze these criminals back to the areas from whence they sprang.

But they’ll keep oozing back after they have terrorized their own neighborhoods.

We need to stop the trouble before it begins. And safe summer sports would be a start.