Good News on Crime Reported In the Lerner
Citing various reasons, including citizen involvement, improved technology, working smarter and gentrification crime is down on the North side and specifically in the 24th District. Both violent and property crime are down. According to the Chicago Police Department stats for our 24th District show that we have seen a 20% drop in violent crimes and a 7.2% drop in property crime. Most significant was the drop in auto thefts.
When compared to our closest neighbor, the nearby 20th District, we showed major improvement with significantly greater gains against crime. In the 20th violent crime was downonly 0.6% and burglaries and thefts wereactually up 8.6%. Across all of the North side we are in the middle with three districts doing better and five doing worse in percentage change of violent crime. In raw numbers, we were even better with 2 districts doing better and six doing worse.
A spokesman for our district made the point that over the last generation we have much more highly organized street gangs. I am sure this is something that can be said about gangs not only across Chicago, but across the nation.
It would be great if we were all able to say that crime is gone from our neighborhood, but we all know better. These statistics represent improvement, but those of us on Lunt, and in other places as well, know that the gang activity is not only more organized and dangerous than in the distant past, but also that they are still out there. Work remains to be done.
Those who have contributed to the recent success are to be congratulated and encouraged. Those who have stood on the sidelines should take notice: getting involved helps. Those of you who have been on Morse more often trying to make use of our local businesses are a group I am particularly proud of. Even those of you who feel the only way to make it to the Morse CTA stop is to run as fast as possible and pray with every single step, thank you for not giving up and moving away. By sticking around you make a difference as well. And last, but not least, the police department deserves credit since we all know they will catch it all if the numbers turn the other way over the next six months. Congratulations all.
But as I said, we still have a ways to go. I am sure a couple of our neighbors have already formulated arguments why Rogers Park isn’t any safer at all. Somehow the police and the North side Alderman are cooking up the numbers so they all look good. They are welcome to their opinion. I choose to believe that things are slightly better for now, whether that makes me a Pollyanna, a mere optimist or right.
