The city of Chicago has long been known for its extensive crime rates and violence. The city’s average crime rate has even soared above the US average rate in past years. It has been a constant controversial issue with little being done to help or improve. Each year there seems to be new numbers and rates that shock the entire country. But, in order to understand why Chicago has always had such a violent reputation, we must consider the city’s history.

Chicago’s crime rates first began gaining a reputation starting in the 1960s. This was not a surprise to many people considering this was the age of the civil rights movement, but after Martin Luther King paid a visit to the city, people started to realize it was becoming a real problem. In an article by the Chicago Tribune, breaking down the timeline of crime in Chicago, the authors write, “After being hit in the neck with a rock, King said, ‘I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today.’” (1). Martin Luther King spent the majority of his life traveling and experiencing the harmful discrimination blacks had to face during this time period. You would think he had seen all the violence he could, yet when he came to Chicago he was appalled. It was like nothing he had seen before. This is when Chicago began to make a name for itself.

During the 1970s violence in Chicago continued to increase. Around 800 homicides were occurring each year and gangs were expanding daily. Not only were the fatalities gang involved, but there were also several random shootings that led to the homicide count. For example, in another Chicago Tribune article titled, “1974 was a deadly year in Chicago”, the author says, “On Jan. 3, an 81-year-old man suffering from dementia shot and wounded an officer before police returned fire and killed him.” (Benzkofer 1). These shootings were not the usual racial-based attacks Chicago had experienced in the past decade. These deaths seemed almost obscure and out of place leaving the city wondering what was happening.

Several events had occurred in the ’80s that led to changes in the death toll. One of the earliest events that took place in 1982 was the handgun freeze. This “freeze” set in place by Ronald Reagan banned the sale and regulation of all handguns. This new ban helped decrease the crime rate significantly for a while during the decade until the arrival of crack cocaine entered the USA.

Flash forward to the ’90s and crack cocaine has completely taken over the drug market in Chicago. This new surplus of drugs led to a domino effect on so many other troubling aspects the city was dealing with. Crack cocaine started a new competition between gangs and began to divide neighborhoods even further. The homicide count began to rise quickly from the previous ban in the 80s and the deaths were becoming more and more tragic. Gang violence was growing so out of control that innocent people were dying left and right. Apart from these innocent people was the death of Dantrell Davis who was shot in the head while on his way to school with his mother. Dantrell was 7 years old and was killed purely out of revenge.

When the 2000s came around, police began to really crack down on the city of Chicago. They began developing new scientific ways to track and prevent crime. They were calculating which neighborhoods needed to be monitored more and they tried to connect neighborhoods together socially. These new approaches were working and started to make the homicide count fall immensely from the 90s. The homicide rate dropped below 500, yet the deaths that were occurring were still very spiteful and gruesome. There were gang affiliated murders and innocent people still being killed due to conflicts they weren’t even associated with. What’s the change of heart? Why is it now that so many innocent people are being killed as opposed to the past?

In Alex Kotlowitz novel, An American Summer: Life or Death in Chicago, he writes about an interaction he had with a previously well-known Chicago gang member named Jimmie who was active in the 80s/90s. Kotlowitz describes his conversation of the current Chicago violence with Jimmie writing, “In 1991 the city recorded 927 homicides, more than double what it is some twenty-two years later. I mentioned this to them, and Jimmie shook his head, not in disagreement but in puzzlement. ‘You say there were more killings back then?’ he asked. ‘But it feels like it’s worse now.’” Kotlowitz considers Jimmie’s comment and later writes, “Or it may be because then most of the shootings were over drug turf, clearly directed at opposing gangs, and now it feels more arbitrary, more random. Also, when the organized gangs fought over terrain, they often gave warning to residents, and now the shootings just happen, like a summer rain shower, and so more victims are unintended targets.” (47). The shootings taking place now, as Kotlowitz describes, seem much more careless. Most of them are directed at a certain group or person, but what the gang members don’t seem to care about this time around is how many people they might have to potentially kill in order to get their target. This is why the death count seems much larger than it has in the past. It’s because a majority of the victims in those homicide counts are innocent and their deaths are tragic.

Chicago has experienced a fluctuation in violence throughout its history. From gang affiliation, to new drugs, and a ban on guns, we have seen the homicide rate soar and fall. Each year there is a new motive or a new accident that is leading to these heartbreaking death rates and there seems to be little control over them. Trying things like connecting more neighborhoods socially such as the police did in the early 2000s are things we need to continue attempting in order to calm the violence.  The actions police enforced in the 2000s is something we need to continue to stem off of in order to end these troubling deaths that Chicago is widely known for.