By Frank Main
The Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — David Kennedy — the New York professor behind a nearly 15-year-old law enforcement strategy of warning gang leaders to put their guns down or else — said he expects Chicago will see a dramatic decrease in killings after launching a pilot program here.
It has been done in about 60 jurisdictions across the country, including Cincinnati, where murders are down about 40 percent since 2007, Kennedy said.
“It’s almost to the point in the crime control business that if [Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis] were not to do it, it would be borderline irresponsible,” Kennedy said.
“What we would like to see in Chicago is what we’ve seen everywhere else where it’s done well, which is a very large and sustained crime reduction,” he said.
Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is an adviser for the Chicago program along with two former Chicagoans, Andrew Papachristos, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, and Tracey Meares, deputy dean of the Yale Law School. The MacArthur Foundation is funding it.
The idea was first tried in 1996 in Boston, where homicides fell nearly 30 percent in the program’s first six months.
On Aug. 17, Weis and representatives of other law-enforcement agencies met with a small group of alleged gang chiefs from the West Side.
At the hush-hush meeting in Garfield Park Conservatory, gang leaders were given a phone number offering help with jobs and social services.
People in the community recounted tragic stories of loved ones killed in gang violence.
Then came the warning: Police told the leaders they must stop the killing or they and their gangs would immediately be targeted by law-enforcement officials with everything from federal conspiracy charges to increased parole visits and traffic enforcement.
News of the meeting, which Mayor Daley has defended, drew immediate criticism from other politicians. The latest came Wednesday from Gov. Quinn, who said: “I don’t think that’s a particularly good strategy.”
Labar Spann, a reputed leader of the Four Corner Hustlers, told the Chicago Sun-Times it was unfair for him to be held responsible for what others do. And a group purporting to represent the Vice Lords Nation said it will hold a news conference today to voice its opposition.
That shows the message is grabbing gang leaders’ attention, Kennedy said.
“It’s a matter of fact that even really hard-core offenders will jump out of the way of a speeding car,” he said.
In other cities, Kennedy said, the streets are usually abuzz after such meetings.
“You get it from wiretaps, jailhouse phone calls, people talking to their parole officers — even [gang members] talking to cops,” he said.
In Cincinnati, police identified members of 69 gangs. The first meeting with gang leaders was in June 2007 in the county courthouse there.
As a result, Kennedy said, murder fell through mid-2008.
Then the cops put the hammer down on a gang that wasn’t getting the message, Kennedy said. About 25 members of the Northside Taliband6 were arrested in a conspiracy case, he said.
Authorities in Cincinnati have continued to hold meetings with gang leaders about every four months, Kennedy said. As of last year, about 100 people had received jobs through the program — and almost half had kept them.
Copyright 2010 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.