Matt Crowl, an adviser on gangs to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, said the main problem is the number of handguns on the streets. While it is illegal in Chicago to own or sell a handgun, the law does not apply to the rest of the state or surrounding areas and guns are smuggled in.
The gang wars are being fought in pockets on the west and south sides of the city, making them virtually invisible to the mostly white and affluent neighborhoods along Lake Michigan and the suburbs to the north.
When Daley tried to move police from low-crime areas of the north side to high-crime areas of the South and West, city council members from low-crime areas objected.
To Vera Evans, mother of murder victim Jason Harvey, the problems appear intractable. Police seldom show up to stop drug-dealing youths who appear on her South Side street every night, and the allure of big money from selling drugs is too great for many youth to resist the trade, she said.
Jason Harvey had a two-year-old son at the time of his death, and Evans dreams of a better future for her grandson. "When he is 15, I hope life will not be so cheap on the streets of Chicago."
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