By Kim Janssen
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO - A secret face-to-face meeting with gang leaders last summer won Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis harsh criticism from aldermen who said he was “negotiating with urban terrorists.”
But the controversial sit-down and new police strategies — both imported from Cincinnati and Boston — cut murders in high-crime parts of the West Side by 40 percent, Weis said Sunday.
The 15 homicides in the Harrison District between the Aug. 17 meeting and the end of 2010 were 10 less than the 25 the district suffered over the same period in 2009 — statistics that “speak for themselves,” the Supt. said.
And Weis said the arrests of more than 60 members of the Black Souls street gang after its members failed to heed his orders to stop the bloodshed in a district that incorporates parts of Garfield Park and Humboldt Park were proof he was “not negotiating” with gangs.