26 October 2016 – Last summer I was in Chicago for several days meeting with police commission personnel about gun violence, homicide rates in major cities nationwide, and police training. It was part of my research for a long piece I am writing for Medium on faulty police training which breeds paranoia. Surprisingly, the police personnel were quite cooperative.
In the course of those sessions I learned that amid growing violence, Chicago now escorts one in five students to school.
Nearly 400,000 public-school students made their way through the streets of Chicago to attend their first day of school on September 6th. For some, the journey can be perilous. As these students walked through streets plagued by gang violence, they were joined by 1,300 security guards in yellow vests stationed along predefined routes in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
These “community watchers” are part of a program designed to protect Chicago students as they travel to and from school. The initiative began in 2009, after a 16-year-old honor-roll student was beaten to death in the street. This school year 142 schools with a total of 75,000 students have safe routes. Since the start of 2016 Chicago has recorded over 500 murders, more than New York and Los Angeles combined and a 50% increase over the same period last year. Figures compiled by the Chicago Tribune reveal 33 of these victims were under 17. The following graphic from the Economist was created from that data with additional information provided by the Chicago Police Department:
