Cam and I have both written favorably about Operation Ceasefire, a program that tries to interrupt violent crime before it happens. It addresses the root causes of violence, at least in theory, and keeps the crime rate lower.
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This negates many of the arguments for gun control in the first place.
But the problem with any program like this is how it’s actually run. Any concept improperly run will create issues. If you screw Ceasefire up badly enough, you end up with a program that doesn’t do anything except employ people between prison sentences.
Which is pretty much what it seems that Chicago has managed to do.
An anti-violence worker is facing a Class X felony gun charge after Chicago police said they found him carrying a gun on the Near West Side.
Cops were called to the 2300 block of West Van Buren on Saturday evening by someone who said a group of men were smoking pot and refusing to leave the building, according to the arrest report for Davon Turner, 35.
The first officers to arrive found a firearm magazine at the scene and radioed descriptions of a group of men who were leaving the area, including at least one who was holding their waistband, said the report.
CPD officers stopped a group matching the description nearby. Turner, who was clutching his waistband near an “L-shaped object,” was one of them, the report stated. Prosecutors say the cops recovered a 40-caliber handgun from Turner.
The arrest report lists Ceasefire/FLIP, two Chicago anti-violence programs, as his employer.
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(Hat tip to our friends at The Truth About Guns for this one, though they’re not nearly as hopeful about Ceasefire as we are, but not without reason). Editor’s note: Chicago’s Ceasefire program differs from Operation Ceasefire, which uses a carrot-and-stick approach to high-risk offenders that involves both community resources for those who are willing to change their ways, as well as tough federal prosecution for those who don’t. Chicago’s program relies primarily on “violence interrupters”, and I don’t consider it to be a true Operation Ceasefire-style program despite the similar name – Cam
The idea of interrupting violence is a solid one, but it’s clear there’s really no vetting of who Ceasefire or FLIP hires and no effort to keep them on the straight and narrow, which undermines the entire effort.
Of course, this is Chicago. Part of me wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they want Ceasefire to fail because if it does, they can justify even more gun control than they already have. “We tried to address the roots, but the violence continues. We have to do something!”
I’m not saying that’s the case, only that I wouldn’t be shocked if it were.
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The truth of the matter, though, is that if you’re going to try and make something like this work, you need to be careful about who you hire to work there. They need to be above board. Oh, I get the rationale for hiring felons–they know the players, after all–but you need to make sure they’re committed to the straight and narrow, not just looking for a paycheck until they’re locked up again.
Maybe make sure they’ve kept their nose clean for a bit?
Either way, leave it to Chicago to botch this. I haven’t seen anything out of the Windy City in a while that remotely looks like intelligent governance. I mean, I figured the laws of probability would have caught up with them and they’d have done something smart on accident by now, but nope.
