Chicago Crime: Not Just An Inner-City Problem

The Chicago Now blogger known as "Joe the Cop" wrote an interesting piece about crime in Chicago's suburbs, basically dispelling the myth that crime is an urban problem. "Joe" is actually a pseudonym, but he is a real-life police officer in Chicago.

Joe samples from comments pertaining to suburban crime stories to illustrate his point:

"I always thought Naperville was a nice community, not any more."
"Glenview Residents actually doing gang killings?"
"Are you kidding me, Schaumburg? I would walk through there at night with my eyes closed."

A cop, he says, won't be fooled by such naivety. Joe's point is that even "nice" communities are not fortified from surrounding neighborhoods and have their fair share of misdemeanors and felonies.

In fact, he says the only difference between the South Side of Chicago and a suburb such as Naperville is the volume of calls. Urban environments have more dense populations and poor neighborhoods tend to experience more crimes of desperation but other than that, the type of calls placed to the police are about the same.

He uses the example of drug-dealing gang members, once limited mostly to urban areas:

They've been scattered in a socially engineered diaspora across the suburbs, and they're quickly finding and bonding with the worst elements in their new communities.

A 2002 study presented to the American Society of Criminology entitled "Suburban Crime?" found that suburban areas were not necessarily safer than urban areas, violent crime in the suburbs was not rare and blacks and whites had comparable rates of arrest.

That's not to say the Far South Side is just as safe as an upscale Chicago suburb, just that the differences are not as stark as often believed. And whether you live in the inner city or the wealthiest suburb, all crime suspects have the right to seek the counsel of a Chicago criminal defense attorney.

Related Resources: