Read on Twitter
004 been busy with this. RICO cases last few years slowed things down for a time, but also means less gang leadership around. 2016, King leadership targeted, Melrose Park all the way to Kankakee/NW Indiana. 2019, Dragons, but some of em flipped from King after the 2016 RICO case. https://twitter.com/SPOTNEWSonIG/status/1294109414782369792
Because this area borders Indiana it's easy for feds to build cases because guys move between East Side / Hegewisch / Avenues and Hammond / Whiting / Gary; and because NW Indiana doesn't have the politics Chicago has it's easier for Chicago cases to find a federal home in NWI.
Anyway. Quiet for awhile - whole neighborhoods knew feds were around. There was a string of RICO investigations / indictments, guys were facing fed time for being part of the organization. Dragon indictment was last summer, quiet almost a year. Picked up a lot this spring though.
in that area yes, because it's a very specific conflict and there aren't a ton of shootings otherwise. Over the whole city no, because the whole city hasn't seen that type of targeted enforcement through local/federal cooperation. https://twitter.com/dadawg77/status/1294112611856941057
All this said: 3 or 5 murders in Hammond is a big deal. Three or 5 murders in the 004th District of Chicago doesn't rate. I wish it weren't that way, but it is. No better example of this than Tavo Garcia. He was 10, he was shot, he died, and it wasn't really a story here.
Media here is shrinking, 004 covers a huge area. The district is working poor. Parts of the district are 18-20 miles away from downtown. Bad traffic means it's not easy to report from there in a breaking news setting. But residents there were shook behind this boy's death.
Cops who were on scene or were chasing shit down the few days after were like, what the fuck, it's a kid smoked because of an adult in his life, where's the media? Where's the outrage?
And, in the neighborhood, among city residents. People were pissed. The alderman, the district commander. People came out, hundreds of people. They showed love for this kid. But across Chicago, as a city that goes from Touhy to 135th, it didn't fucking matter.
City police in 004 built a RICO case out of Tavo's murder. It was charged out of Northwest Indiana. They ended up charging 11 murders out of that investigation. Can you remember that much violence getting charged out of a single investigation?
You can debate the merits of locking people up at all when our system is not at all corrective, and you can know that locking up gang leadership leads to future conflict.
At the same time, a kid died here, it didn't merit citywide outrage, shit it didn't even merit citywide attention. The people closest to it did what they could, which is more than what happens in most of the city, and they charged it in Indiana.
He was a kid. He was a kid. He didn't get to live his life. And when it all shook out, his friends washed cars to raise money for his funeral.
You can blame adults all you want. It doesn't change the fact that he was a kid. And when it came down to it - the whole blessed city didn't say barely a word.
So. Gang members doing gang shit in 004th District. It's a nuisance call now. Pissers and drinkers, obstructing traffic maybe. Or some property damage. Bottles on cars. Assault even.
In our current system, the alleged adults, the mayor and the supt and the feds in the Northern District, all the big fucking toughguy politicians and their public relations staffs, they can't answer for this.
Locking up gang members, gang leaders, leads to violence. Not locking up gang members, gang leaders, also leads to violence. And as long as guys are shooting at each other, kids will get it. Just the reality of all this.
It's not wrong of us to both understand the difficulty of the situation and expect answers from our elected officials. More than 'this is hard more cops downtown' or 'this is hard more feds please.'
Here's some more extremely sad shit to come out of the investigation into Tavo's death.
Indictment alleges Dragons responsible for death of 10yo girl shot while tying the shoes of blind 5yo sister in 2008. Dragons were firing at LKs when they shot her. The 5yo, unaware her older sister had been shot, hung onto a gate and called out for her sister.
Tell me something worse than this. Two siblings, one looking out for the other. One helps the other, then gunfire, the older one's down, the other can't tell what's happening. It's not fair. It took 12 years to charge that murder. 12 years!
Anyway. Tomorrow I will wake up, hopefully. S/O to our 'reform is here' mayor. Some adults will get shot, nobody will give a shit. It's possible a kid gets shot, nobody will give a shit. That's our city. That's Chicago. For better or worse. If you live here, this is home.
