Out of Order Comes Chaos [View all]

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http://inthesetimes.com/article/12843/out_of_order_comes_chaos/


Vacant houses in Englewood, a South Side neighborhood that is one of Chicago's poorest and most violence. In 2011, it had 56 murders—a 40 percent increase from 2010.

Chicago’s black gangs aren’t the criminal enterprises they once were, but the police won’t change their story.

CHICAGO – In January, the Chicago Crime Commission released its 2012 Gang Book to much fanfare. Its findings – that most residents of the city “live and work within feet of a gang’s operations,” and that there are more than 70 gangs with as many as 150,000 members – were faithfully repeated by Chicago media outlets. The president of the commission, former Chicago police superintendent Jody Weis, explained to Fox Chicago News:

'What we’re seeing today with these younger street gangs, with these hundreds and hundreds of factions of gangs out there [is] it might be four or five kids on a corner, but they’re still organized, they’re still a gang, they’re still a criminal enterprise, selling illegal products, enforcing often times their turf with weapons.'

But some researchers in Chicago and gang members themselves scoff at this official narrative – starting with the definition of “gang.” The Gang Book defines a street gang as “an organized group that participates in criminal, threatening or intimidating activity within the community” using, among other characteristics, “a defining hierarchy,” “a regular meeting pattern,” “a code of conduct” and “an organized, continuous course of criminal activity.”

Lance Williams, assistant director of Northeastern Illinois University’s Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies and the co-author of The Almighty Black P. Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of an American Gang, says the vast majority of black gang members in Chicago do not fit this official description. He estimates that at most 10 percent are involved in criminal activity, such as drug dealing or extortion. And even though this minority may self-identify as being part of a gang, the gang has nothing to do with their crimes. “They might happen to be part of a gang, but they took that upon themselves,” he says. Unlike in the ’80s and ’90s, when highly organized, hierarchal gangs controlled Chicago’s underground economy, today there’s no leadership around even to get a kickback.

“Between the War on Drugs and the war on street gangs in Chicago, the whole infrastructure fell apart – there’s no top-down control,” Williams says. In addition, there are no formal rituals for initiation. Gangs are largely a block-by-block neighborhood association. Williams works closely with the 8-Tray Stones, a 300–500 member “set” of Black P. Stones based at 83rd Street (“8-Tray”) on the South Side that ranges in age from young children to grandfathers. At an early age, the men in the neighborhood learn the Stones handshake or gang sign, but that’s the extent of their affiliation.